mailcap-agent

mailcap-agent can be used to use local commands to view files from a remote host, e.g. when using ssh to read email. To use it, run

./mailcap-server.py ~/.mailcap.sock

on your local host, then add something like this to your ~/.ssh/config:

Host example.com
    RemoteForward /home/remoteuser/.mailcap.sock /home/localuser/.mailcap.sock

On the remote host, set up your ~/.mailcap, e.g. to open all images and PDFs using mailcap-agent:

image/*;~/mailcap-client.py %s %t
application/pdf;~/mailcap-client.py %s %t

and try opening a file.