Even though this is a good idea for some situations, most of the times, it’s just annoying: Collecting ideas for seminar papers or a thesis, for instance, is almost impossible without being able to Copy & Paste certain paragraphs from the PDF.

Fortunately, Linux can solve this problem with a simple tool called pdf to text. This command line tool simply strips all text from the PDF file and saves it to a given text-file.

Installation

The tool is part of the package poppler-utils and can be installed via your favorite package manager, e.g. apt-get:

$ apt-get install poppler-utils

Extract text from PDF files

This is also pretty simple and the man-page gives the instructions: pdftotext [options] <PDF> [<text-file>].

$ pdftotext PDF-file-with-copy-and-paste-restriction.pdf

In case you’d like to perform this for every PDF-file in a folder (recursive search), simple do that:

$ find -name '*.pdf' -exec pdftotext "{}" \;

After executing the command, there will be a *.txt-file for each PDF file in the folder, – containing the plain-text of the corresponding PDF file.

Unfortunately, the installation on Ubuntu/Kubuntu and any other Linux distribution is still not the most comfortable. For this reason, I sat down some hours and packed the tool into a deb-package and additionally added a nice command line tool to simplify some of the basics.

For those who can’t wait, here’s the package: gcaldaemon_1.0beta16~ubuntu0_all.deb

Update Nov ’08: Ubuntu Intrepid: I just re-installed my Ubuntu and successfully tested the provided version for the new system. Works like a charm for Hardy and for Intrepid.
~ 150 downloads so far, no complains/malfunctions!

Update Feb ’09: Launchpad: I just uploaded the code that creates the deb-package on Launchpad. Maybe somebody of the Ubuntu team will pick it up and integrate it into the distribution. There is also a bug report for this issue, – feel free to contribute.

For all of you interested how to create your own package from my sources, follow these steps:

$ bzr branch lp:~binwiederhier/+junk/gcaldaemon
$ cd gcaldaemon
$ wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/gcaldaemon/gcaldaemon-linux-1.0-beta16.zip
$ sudo ./create-package.sh gcaldaemon-linux-1.0-beta16.zip 'gcaldaemon_1.0beta16~ubuntu0_all.deb'
$ sudo dpkg -i gcaldaemon_1.0beta16~ubuntu0_all.deb

Update Apr ’09: Ubuntu 9.04, Jaunty Jackalope: As Jens just wrote in the comments-section, the deb-package seems to work for Jaunty as well without complications. Yeyy!

Update Jan ’11: Ubuntu 10.04 & 10.10: According to my tests, the package still works perfectly with both Lucid Lynx and Maverick Meerkat.

Download and install

Alternatively to creating the package from my source, you can just download and install it from my deb-file:

$ wget http://blog.philippheckel.com/uploads/2008/09/gcaldaemon_1.0beta16~ubuntu0_all.deb
$ sudo dpkg -i gcaldaemon_1.0beta16~ubuntu0_all.deb

The following tools will be available:

• gcaldaemon
  Start/stop/restart the daemon.
• gcaldaemon-sync-now
  For immediate synchronization.
• gcaldaemon-config
  Open the graphical config editor.
  Also available via the menu „Utilities -> Configure GCALDaemon”.
• gcaldaemon-password-encoder
  Encode passwords for the config file.

Configuration

Each user of the system can have his or her own instance of the daemon running.
The config file is located at ~/.gcaldaemon/conf/gcal-daemon.cfg.

To edit the config file, you can either use your favorite editor, e.g. vi or use the GCALDaemon config editor GUI:

$ gcaldaemon-config

You can also open the config editor via the menu: „Utilities -> Configure GCALDaemon”.

To create passwords for the config file use the gcaldaemon-password-encoder-script. For details about the config options, please read the GCALDaemon documentation.

Running GCALDaemon

I have simplified the way how to start/stop the daemon with a small script. Simply type “gcaldaemon” to see what it can do.

To start, restart, stop and check the status (just like in an init-script), type:

$ gcaldaemon start
Starting GCALDaemon ... ok
 
$ gcaldaemon status
GCALDaemon is running as PID 30543.
 
$ gcaldaemon restart
Stopping GCALDaemon ... ok
Starting GCALDaemon ... ok
 
$ gcaldaemon stop
Stopping GCALDaemon ... ok

Enable autostart for GCALDaemon

To enable the autostart-option for GNOME or KDE, type:

$ gcaldaemon enable kde
$ gcaldaemon enable kde4
$ gcaldaemon enable gnome

As a GNOME user, it’s also possible to enable/disable the daemon autostart via the menu „System -> Settings -> Sessions”

Finally …

I know that the package is far from perfect, but it’s a lot easier to install/configure than the original package. Feedback is always welcome.

In some applications you might want to calculate a deadline date within the week, e.g. to make sure that a product or service will be delivered within a time frame of max. 10 working days.

The VB function

The following small function adds weekdays to a given start date and calculates a dealine date within the week (Mo – Fr):

Function AddWeekDays(StartDate As Long, Days As Long) As Date
    Dim i As Long
    Dim d As Date
 
    d = StartDate
    i = 0
 
    While i < Days
        d = DateSerial(Year(d), Month(d), Day(d) + 1)
        If Weekday(d, vbMonday) < 6 Then
            i = i + 1
        End If
    Wend
 
    AddWeekDays = d
End Function

Sample usage

The function above can either be used in a spreadsheet or within a VB script.

Usage in a spreadsheet

Here’s how you would add it to a spreadsheet, e.g. in Microsoft Excel or in OpenOffice.org Spreadsheet:

Usage in a VB script

Sub TestWeekDays()
    Dim SLA_Violation_Date As Date
    SLA_Violation_Date = AddWeekDays(DateValue("27.07.2008"), 10)    
 
    ' Result will be 27.07.2008 + 10 Working Days = 08.08.2008
    MsgBox SLA_Violation_Date
End Sub

Update Feb/09

Apparently, this can be solved in a really easy way as Mads Buus suggested in the comments-section. The GNOME desktop environment ships with a tool called gnome-open, which can be used for this:

$ gnome-open .

This opens Nautilus in the current working directory. Note: Don’t forget the dot after the command!

You might also want to look how to make a shortcut for this command, cmp. Mads Buus’ comment below. Thanks again for this much easier solution!

The solution

The solution is basically just a one-line command:

$ echo "'`pwd`'" | xargs nautilus --browser

To make it shorter, we can just put these lines in a script called naut. You can either save the script where you like to or put it in your very own .bin-directory (which I will do here).

$ mkdir ~/.bin
$ echo -e '#!/bin/bash\necho "'\''`pwd`'\''" | xargs nautilus --browser' > ~/.bin/naut
$ chmod +x ~/.bin/naut

Make sure to add the .bin-directory to your PATH variable:

$ echo -e '\n# Private binaries\nexport PATH=$PATH:~/.bin' >> ~/.bashrc

Usage of the naut-command

You can now use the naut-command in your console window (make sure to restart the console window before). Here is a small example:

$ cd "/very/long and complicated/path/to/a/very/important/directory"
$ naut

Et voilà , the Nautilus window will pop up.