This is a very nifty tool I forgot about and then rediscovered. It is capable of handling all sorts of input formats, letting you view html, pdf, ps, dvi, and even word files. It also can list files from archives, or extract and display specific files from archives. It even will syntax highlight your source files.
You will want to first install all the helper apps. On Debian or Ubuntu :
apt-get install mp3info unrtf antiword xpdf-utils html2text pstotext dvi2tty cabextract
Then download the tarball, run make, and set up your .bash_profile file properly. I added the following line to my .bash_profile:
export LESSOPEN=”|/usr/local/bin/lesspipe.sh %s”
Now “re-source” this file from your prompt (. ~/.bash_profile) and try things out. To view a file from an archive use less archive.tgz:docs/README for example. To turn on the syntax highlighting feature use less -R mycode.c.