Sun's PC File Viewer

Sun's PC File Viewer

Sun has recently announced a program that can view files generated by standard PC word processors, etc. For Solaris 2.6, it is available from Sun's web site: Sun Microsystem: PC File Viewer. It is a standard part of Solaris 7.

There's one significant limitation: printing is not supported. Sun says it will be supported in a future version.

The product appears to be a cut-down version of INSO's "Quick View". Supported formats for this version are:

Word Processor

AMI/AMI Professional versions through 3.1
Microsoft Windows Works versions through 4.0
Microsoft Word for Windows versions thru 7.0 and Word 97
WordPerfect for Windows through ver 7.0

Spreadsheet

Lotus 1-2-3 Windows versions through 6.x
Lotus 1-2-3 Chart Windows versions through 5.0
Microsoft Excel Windows versions 2.2 through 7.0 and Excel 97
Microsoft Excel Chart versions 2.x through 7.0
Microsoft Windows Works versions through 4.0
QuattroPro for windows versions through 7.0

Graphics

BMP (Windows)
DXF (Versions through 13)
GEM (Bitmap and vector)
PIC (Lotus)

Presentation

Corel Presentation versions through 7.0
Freelance versions 1.0 and 2.0
Microsoft PowerPoint versions through 7.0 and PowerPoint 97

Note that Microsoft and Wordperfect Office 2000 use the same file formats as the previous versions, so this program should be able to view their files also.

Because of the large size of the file, I've put a copy in /rutgers/ref/solaris-dist/pcv_install.bin. This is visible only from within Rutgers. This is actually a ksh script, so you can just execute it.

Things to note about the installer:

The program will only install under 2.6 or 7. (However for Solaris 7 you would not use this procedure. Instead you would install the package SUNWdtpcv from /rutgers/ref/solaris-dist/Solaris-7/solaris7_suppcd/Product.)
It makes no checks for file space. It needs: well over 30 MB on root (i.e. I ran out at 30 MB), 8 MB on /usr, and 18 MB on /opt. If you have a small root, I recommend redirecting /var/spool/pkg to somewhere that has lots of space. That is used as a work area for decompression, etc. If you don't have enough space here, the installer will bomb with an irrelevant error message.
It installs 105633-06, which is a patch to openwindows.
It installs several Truetype fonts. One of them is Arial. This will change the way many web pages look, since it is common to specify Arial,Helvetica when you want a sans serif font. Normally Suns have Helvetica but not Arial. So pages display with Helvetica. After installing PCviewer you will have Arial. In my opinion this Arial is not as readable as the default Helvetica, and it has too much interline spacing.

Things to note about using the program:

It is intended for use under CDE. It installs itself as a CDE "action".
If you are not using CDE, you will want to add the following to .initrc or .xsession:
/usr/openwin/bin/xset fp+ /usr/openwin/lib/X11/fonts/TrueType,/opt/SUNWdtpcv/fonts
The program itself is /opt/SUNWdtpcv/bin/sdtpcv. You may wish to make a symlink from /opt/bin or /usr/local/bin.

If you want to call the viewer automatically from mail programs such as pine, you'll need to add entries to your mailcap file. At Rutgers this is commonly /etc/mailcap, though on my system it is /usr/local/etc/mailcap. If you're not the system administrator, you can add the lines to .mailcap in your home directory. You'll want to add lines that look like this:

application/rtf; sdtpcv %s
application/msword; sdtpcv %s
application/vnd.ms-excel; sdtpcv %s
application/x-excel; sdtpcv %s
application/x-msexcel; sdtpcv %s
application/ppt; sdtpcv %s
application/vnd.ms-powerpoint; sdtpcv %s
application/wordperfect5.1; sdtpcv %s
application/vnd.lotus-1-2-3; sdtpcv %s

(This is not a complete list of all possible document types. It's just the ones I've run into. You can of course add additional ones, though you'll need to see what MIME type is used.) This assumes you have made a symlink from /opt/bin. Otherwise you'll need to use the whole path: /opt/SUNWdtpcv/bin/sdtpcv.

Other things you may want to add to your mailcap that have nothing to do with this program are

   application/postscript; ghostview %s
   text/html; netscape %s
   application/pdf;/opt/bin/acroread %

However I'd check first to see whether they are already present. Most systems will probably have ghostview set up already. Acroread is the Adobe PDF file viewer. If you don't have it, you can get it from the Adobe web site, www.adobe.com. If you have an older version of Lynx, the text/html entry may cause it to loop.