Hi: While on PDF files, I use pstotext which I assume is similar to ps2ascii. If ps2ascii uses ghostscript, then you might be interested to know that there is a package to allow you to read encrypted PDF files. It's available in debian as gs-pdfencrypt. Let me know if you want further details. Geoff. -- Geoff Shang <gshang10 at scu.edu.au> ICQ number 43634701