How to open PDF file in Emacs?

Question

I am a new to Emacs. I'm trying to open PDF file but no success.

Also, I tried to open DOCX file and pictures (JPEG, PNG) but failed too. I used M-x image-dired function and doc-view but nothing.

I found this but don't know how to get PNG support for Emacs.

If anyone can help?

Answer 1

You need to provide a bit more information as this functionality can vary depending on what platform you are on. It can also depend on what libraries have been compiled into emacs and what other utility programs you have on your system. On Linux and OSX (emacs installed via homebrew), this is fairly easy to get working as the necessary external utilities are easy to install. I don't know about Windows.

The emacs manual has these 2 footnotes in the section on doc-view

(1) gs is a hard requirement. For DVI files, dvipdf or dvipdfm is needed. For OpenDocument and Microsoft Office documents, the unoconv tool is needed.

(2) The needed external tools for the document type must be available, and Emacs must be running in a graphical frame and have PNG image support. If any of these requirements is not fulfilled, Emacs falls back to another major mode.