viewing pdf, doc etc files

["T.V. Raman" <tv.raman.tv@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

An older version of this contrib from Tim was checked in a while
ago as contrib/tx-convert.el -- I've checked this one in as
contrib/txutils.el


-- 

-- 


On 7/25/12, Bart Bunting <bart@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Tim,
>
> Thanks for this.  It is proving very helpfull.
>
> I'll let you know how it goes and if there are any issues.  It would be
> nice to see something like this integrated into emacspeak.
>
>
>
> Kind regards
> Bart
>
> On Tue, 24 Jul 2012 09:08:06 +1000, "Tim Cross" <tcross@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> Hi Bart,
>>
>> I've got a small library I use to handle this. Essentially, it hooks into
>> dired
>> view-mode and will convert files based on the extension type. It has a
>> custom
>> interface to add new/additional converters. I've been using this
>> extensively
>> for years now. Attached below
>>
>> Tim
>>
>> ;;      Filename: /home/tcross/projects/emacs-convert/txutils.el
>> ;; Creation Date: Wednesday, 20 September 2006 10:13 PM EST
>> ;; Last Modified: Monday, 19 July 2010 04:37 PM EST
>> ;;       Version: 2.0
>> ;;        Author: Tim Cross <tcross@xxxxxxxxxxx>
>> ;;   Description: Convert files from doc, ps, pdf, ppt to a format
>> ;;                which can be viewed within emacs (i.e. text or html)
>>
>> ;;; Copyright (C) 2006. Tim Cross <tcross@xxxxxxxxxxx>
>> ;;; All Rights Reserved.
>> ;;;
>> ;;; This file is not part of GNU Emacs, but the same permissions apply.
>> ;;;
>> ;;; GNU Emacs is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
>> ;;; it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
>> ;;; the Free Software Foundation; either version 2, or (at your option)
>> ;;; any later version.
>> ;;;
>> ;;; GNU Emacs is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
>> ;;; but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
>> ;;; MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
>> ;;; GNU General Public License for more details.
>> ;;;
>> ;;; You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
>> ;;; along with GNU Emacs; see the file COPYING.  If not, write to
>> ;;; the Free Software Foundation, 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
>> ;;;
>> ;;; Commentary
>> ;;; ==========
>> ;;;
>> ;;; The very simple idea behind this basic utility is to make accessing
>> ;;; files in .doc, .pdf, .ps and .ppt more easily accessible without
>> ;;; having to leave emacs or manually convert the file format prior
>> ;;; to being able to view the contents in emacs.
>> ;;;
>> ;;; There are packages which will enable calls to external viewers
>> ;;; for files of specific formats, such as xpdf for pdf etc. However,
>> ;;; I wanted to have everything within emacs as this makes integration,
>> ;;; cutting/pasting etc a lot easier, plus as a blind user, most
>> ;;; external utilities are of little use because they don't also include
>> ;;; speech support.
>> ;;;
>> ;;; The objective here is to have things setup so that when browsing
>> ;;; a directory with dired, you can just hit 'v' for any file you want to
>> ;;; view and you will be presented with a text or html version without
>> ;;; needing to do any manual conversion - or even careing about what
>> ;;; would need to be done.
>> ;;;
>> ;;; You need the following packages (or at least utilities which will
>> ;;; do the same thing). Most of these are fairly standard with many Linux
>>
>> ;;; distros these days.
>> ;;; The wv utilities which contain wvText for converting MS Word docs
>> ;;; The xpdf utilities which include pdftotext for converting PDF to text
>> ;;; The Ghostscript package which contains pstotext for converting PS to
>> text
>> ;;; The ppthtml utility for converting MS Power Point files to html
>> ;;; A configured and working browse-url setup. I use w3m as my browser
>> ;;;
>> ;;; Customizing
>> ;;; ===========
>> ;;;
>> ;;; The easiest way to customize the conversion utility settings is to
>> ;;; use M-x customize-group <RET> txutils <RET>
>> ;;;
>> ;;; In the txutils customize group, you will find just one setting, which
>> ;;; is an alist of values indexed by a regular expression that matches
>> against
>> ;;; file extensions - a crude way of determining the source filetype
>> ;;; (i.e. *.doc, *.pdf, *.ps, *.ppt, *.xls, *.html etc). See the
>> ;;; documentation for more details.
>> ;;;
>> ;;; Installation
>> ;;; ============
>> ;;;
>> ;;; Pretty straight forward. Place this file somewhere in your load path
>> ;;; and put a (require 'txutils) in your .emacs. You may want to byte
>> ;;; compile this file.
>> ;;;
>> ;;; Thanks
>> ;;; ======
>> ;;;
>> ;;; A number of people provided suggestions on how to improve both my
>> elisp
>> ;;; and the program itself. In particular, thanks goes to
>> ;;; Lukas Loehrer
>> ;;; Vinicius Jose Latorre
>> ;;; Andreas Roehler
>> ;;;
>> ;;; plus a few others who gave general suggestions, feedback and
>> ;;; encouragement. Thanks to everyone for taking the time and putting
>> ;;; in the effort, its greatly appreciated.
>> ;;;
>> ;;; Reporting Bugs
>> ;;; ==============
>> ;;;
>> ;;; This is the first bit of elisp I've allowed out into the world and
>> ;;; while I am really learning to love both elisp and cl lisp, I'm still
>> ;;; very much a novice. Therefore, there IS bugs and probably some pretty
>>
>> ;;; poor style within this stuff. Feedback, bug reports and suggestions
>> ;;; always welcome. Send e-mail to tcross@xxxxxxxxxxx
>> ;;;
>> ;;; Emacspeak Users Note - I've not attempted to enhance this code to
>> provide
>> ;;; better spoken or audio icon feedback. When the code matures a bit and
>> ;;; once I get some feedback, I will see if a re-worked version can be
>> ;;; included in emacspeak. In the meantime, feel free to use 'advice' to
>> ;;; improve things.
>>
>> (require 'custom)
>> (require 'browse-url)
>>
>> ; make-temp-file is part of apel prior to emacs 22
>> ;(static-when (= emacs-major-version 21)
>> ;  (require 'poe))
>>
>> (defgroup txutils nil
>>   "Customize group for txutils."
>>   :prefix "txutils-"
>>   :group 'External)
>>
>> (defcustom txutils-convert-alist
>>   '( ;; MS Word
>>     ("\\.\\(?:DOC\\|doc\\)$"     doc  "/usr/bin/wvText"    nil nil nil nil
>> nil)
>>     ;; PDF
>>     ("\\.\\(?:PDF\\|pdf\\)$"     pdf  "/usr/bin/pdftotext" nil nil nil nil
>> nil)
>>     ;; PostScript
>>     ("\\.\\(?:PS\\|ps\\)$"       ps   "/usr/bin/pstotext"  "-output" t nil
>> nil nil)
>>     ;; MS PowerPoint
>>     ("\\.\\(?:PPT\\|ppt\\)$"     ppt  "/usr/bin/ppthtml"   nil nil nil t
>> t))
>>
>>   "*Association for program convertion.
>>
>> Each element has the following form:
>>
>> (REGEXP SYMBOL CONVERTER SWITCHES INVERT REDIRECT-INPUT REDIRECT-OUTPUT
>> HTML-OUTPUT)
>>
>> Where:
>>
>> REGEXP		   is a regexp to match file type to convert.
>>
>> SYMBOL		   is a symbol to designate the fyle type.
>>
>> CONVERTER	   is a program to convert the fyle type to text or HTML.
>>
>> SWITCHES	   is a string which gives command line switches for the
>> conversion
>>                program. Nil means there are no switches needed.
>>
>> INVERT		   indicates if input and output program option is to be
>>                inverted or not.  Non-nil means to invert, that is, output
>>
>>                option first then input option.  Nil means do not invert,
>>                that is, input option first then output option.
>>
>> REDIRECT-INPUT indicates to use < to direct input from the input
>>                file. This is useful for utilities which accept input
>>                from stdin rather than a file.
>>
>> REDIRECT-OUTPUT indicates to use > to direct output to the output
>>                file. This is useful for utilities that only send output to
>>
>>                stdout.
>>
>> HTML-OUTPUT    Indicates the conversion program creates HTML output
>>                rather than plain text."
>>
>>   :type '(repeat
>>           (list :tag "Convertion"
>>                 (regexp  :tag "File Type Regexp")
>>                 (symbol  :tag "File Type Symbol")
>>                 (string  :tag "Converter")
>>                 (choice  :menu-tag "Output Option"
>>                          :tag "Output Option"
>>                          (const :tag "None" nil)
>>                          string)
>>                 (boolean :tag "Invert I/O Option")
>>                 (boolean :tag "Redirect Standard Input")
>>                 (boolean :tag "Redirect Standard Output")
>>                 (boolean :tag "HTML Output")))
>>   :group 'txutils)
>>
>> (defun txutils-run-command (cmd &optional output-buffer)
>>   "Execute shell command with arguments, putting output in buffer."
>>   (= 0 (shell-command cmd (if output-buffer
>>                               output-buffer
>>                             "*txutils-output*")
>>                           (if output-buffer
>>                               "*txutils-output*"))))
>>
>> (defun txutils-quote-expand-file-name (file-name)
>>   "Expand file name and quote special chars if required."
>>   (shell-quote-argument (expand-file-name file-name)))
>>
>> (defun txutils-file-alist (file-name)
>>   "Return alist associated with file of this type."
>>   (let ((al txutils-convert-alist))
>>     (while (and al
>>                 (not (string-match (caar al) file-name)))
>>       (setq al (cdr al)))
>>     (if al
>>         (cdar al)
>>       nil)))
>>
>> (defun txutils-make-temp-name (orig-name type-alist)
>>   "Create a temp file name from original file name"
>>   (make-temp-file (file-name-sans-extension
>>                    (file-name-nondirectory orig-name)) nil
>>                   (if (nth 7 type-alist)
>>                       ".html"
>>                     ".txt")))
>>
>> (defun txutils-build-cmd (input-file output-file type-alist)
>>   "Create the command string from conversion alist."
>>   (let ((f1 (if (nth 3 type-alist)
>>                 output-file
>>               input-file))
>>         (f2 (if (nth 3 type-alist)
>>                 input-file
>>               output-file)))
>>     (concat
>>      (nth 1 type-alist)
>>      (if (nth 2 type-alist)               ; Add cmd line switches
>>          (concat " " (nth 2 type-alist)))
>>      (if (nth 4 type-alist)          ; redirect input (which may be
>> output
>>          (concat " < " f1)           ; if arguments are inverted!)
>>        (concat " " f1))
>>      (if (nth 5 type-alist)          ; redirect output (see above
>> comment)
>>          (concat " > " f2)
>>        (concat " " f2)))))
>>
>> (defun txutils-do-file-conversion (file-name)
>>   "Based on file extension, convert file to text. Return name of text
>> file"
>>   (interactive "fFile to convert: ")
>>   (let ((f-alist (txutils-file-alist file-name))
>>         output-file)
>>     (when f-alist
>>       (message "Performing file conversion for %s." file-name)
>>       (setq output-file (txutils-make-temp-name file-name f-alist))
>>       (message "Command: %s" (txutils-build-cmd file-name output-file
>> f-alist))
>>       (if (txutils-run-command
>>            (txutils-build-cmd (txutils-quote-expand-file-name file-name)
>>                               (txutils-quote-expand-file-name
>>                                output-file) f-alist))
>>           output-file
>>         file-name))))
>>
>> (defadvice view-file (around txutils pre act comp)
>>   "Perform file conversion or call web browser to view contents of file."
>>   (let ((file-arg (ad-get-arg 0)))
>>     (if (txutils-file-alist file-arg)
>>       (ad-set-arg 0 (txutils-do-file-conversion file-arg)))
>>     (if (string-match "\\.\\(?:HTML?\\|html?\\)$" (ad-get-arg 0))
>>         (browse-url-of-file (ad-get-arg 0))
>>       ad-do-it)))
>>
>> (provide 'txutils)
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Bart Bunting writes:
>>  > Hi everyone,
>>  >
>>  > Can anyone share their current setup for viewing pdf or doc files in
>>  > emacs?
>>  >
>>  > I have been thinking that it would be possible to use unoconv to
>> convert
>>  > all manner of files to text and view them from emacs.
>>  >
>>  > All this works just fine from the commandline.  Was wondering if
>> anyone
>>  > has this already setup and if so how?
>>  >
>>  > I'm trying to figure out how to hook it nicely into dired mode etc.
>>  >
>>  > I see the emacspeak-wizards-pdf-open function which works when called
>>  > interactively but can't see how to replace doc-view when calling
>>  > view-file with v in dired.
>>  >
>>  > Kind regards
>>  >
>>  > Bart
>>  > --
>>  >
>>  >
>>  > Kind regards
>>  >
>>  > Bart
>>  >
>>  >
>> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>  > To unsubscribe from the emacspeak list or change your address on the
>>  > emacspeak list send mail to "emacspeak-request@xxxxxxxxxxx" with a
>>  > subject of "unsubscribe" or "help".
>>  >
>>
>> --
>> Tim Cross
>> Information Technology
>> University of New England
>>  Phone: +61 2 6773 3210
>> Mobile: 0428 212217
>> E-Mail: tcross@xxxxxxxxxxx
>>    Web: http://www.une.edu.au/itd
>> ---
>> Please avoid sending me Word or PowerPoint attachments.
>> See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html
>>
>> Any fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes
>> a
>> touch of genius (and a lot of courage) to move in the opposite direction.
>>                                                            —Albert
>> Einstein
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
> Bart
> --
>
>
> Kind regards
>
> Bart
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> To unsubscribe from the emacspeak list or change your address on the
> emacspeak list send mail to "emacspeak-request@xxxxxxxxxxx" with a
> subject of "unsubscribe" or "help".
>
>

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