How to read info-documentation as pdf? - gnu

(Almost) all GNU programs ship info documentation that is viewable with info <topic>. This uses a TUI for displaying the documentation. I dislike this, since it is hardly readable. Given the .texi-files, on can also generate a pdf-file from the documentation, but this makes it neccessary to manually download the source package. Is there a way to generate pdf-documentation from the .info-files?
Please move this question to superuser.com if appropriate.

You could use other readers like tkinfo or pinfo. Or just use your browser going to https://gnu.org/software/program-name. I haven't found nothing to convert info files to pdf.

Related

Is there a way to collaborate with non-markdown users when developing DOCX documents with pandoc markdown?

Say I use markdown to write a memo, and convert it with pandoc to a DOCX, which my non-technically-inclined collaborator uses, and say the collaborator changes a few things while tracking changes.
Now I want to accept some changes and reject some others, then get the new version back into markdown to work on the next draft. But converting docx -> markdown with pandoc tends to be lossy--viewed as functions, the functions are not inverses; ToMarkdown(ToWord(md_file)) != md_file.
With this limitation, the pandoc/markdown workflow is basically a dead-end after draft 1. It's great to use vim and plaintext instead of Word for the first draft, but if there are a significant number of changes, then it's often just as much work to recover and verify them and correct unintentional losses in v2 of a markdown file from the collaborator's DOCX as it is just to put up with MS Word from the get-go.
Does anyone have a workaround for this situation that gets them to "v2" or higher using markdown / plaintext with minimal manual work in Word?
There is a long discussion at pandoc-discuss about the issue. The short answer is no, there is no support for to docx and back to md without losses.
That said, #mb21 mentions the --track-changes flag, which allows for a little bit more control, however you would have to incorporate changes manually.
The solution for your problem is either:
Convince collaborators to use md instead of Word, or;
Start using Authorea which uses pandoc in the background to generate the documents. You can even make it sinc with github, while your collaborator uses the webversion.
I have been experimenting with option 2, but it is super hard to convince most of the collaborators to move to an online interface.

Script for PDF files check

I wanna perform some check for PDF files.
I wish to check the width of pages and also figure out if the file contains double-pages.
Is there any frameworkfor that?
Thanks!
Greetings
Magda
Indeed there is. PDF::API2 looks like it will might you what you need.
It's designed for creation and modification of PDF files. If not, search CPAN for other PDF APIs.
I don't fully understand your question, but for a start check out these utility scripts that come with the CAM-PDF distribution. Look at the lower half of this web page, e.g. getpdfpage.pl.
A lot depends on the complexity of your PDFs, though.

Converting HTML to odt, doc, docx

Is there an easy way to convert HTML(with CSS styles and embedded images) to ODT, DOCX, DOC from the command line on linux server. I searched a lot but have not found a good option.
There was a problem the same way to convert to PDF, decided by wkhtmltopdf. Perhaps there are ways to convert the resulting PDF documents to other formats?
To convert to odt it's pretty easy after installing pandoc.
After the relatively hard part: from odt (or even html) you can script (Open|Libre)Office via e.g. unoconv
Or you can like:
abiword --to=doc filename.odt
Also see this thread, and this blog post.
HTH
If you want to convert HTML into docx you may use a solution like PHPDocX. You need to get the PRO version though because the free one does not include the conversion functionality.
If you're on ruby there is a gem based on libreoffice headless (with pyod/jod converter) and pdf tools.
Post with your issues to the pandoc GoogleGroup, John is very responsive in every way.
You may even find the latest release v1.9 may fix your problem, or maybe you just need to get to know the toolset in more detail.
I found soultion - is abiword in console variant.

make swf from fla without ever opening it

is it possible to change text and images in a fla file without ever opening it up and then making the swf via command line? I want to make a flash template and save the fla. Then be able to update my text and image name and convert it to swf. I have one template but tons of different text options and background images. It would be nice to be able to copy the master.fla twenty times and just change the source code (will do this from command line) and then convert to swf (via command line).
Any help would be appreciated.
With CS5, you can do half of what you're asking today, by using the XFL file format instead of FLA. Instead of a binary blob, you get an editable XML file and a tree of separate asset files: PNGs, AS3 files, etc. You can then modify the XML or AS3 files programmatically to get your variants.
(A CS5 FLA file is really just a zipped up version of the XFL, but there's no advantage to using that instead of an XFL. In CS4 and previous, FLA was a proprietary binary format.)
The missing piece is an XFL compiler. Adobe currently provides no such thing, and the third party market hasn't yet produced one.
You could use a systems automation tool to drive the Flash Professional environment through the compilation steps. On OS X, for example, either Automator or AppleScript should be able to do what you want. It'll just have more overhead than the command line compiler you were hoping for.
I agree with Jason, there are a lot of alternatives to what you suggest. Keeping content out of the SWF is good practice actually. This is a good way to avoid large files!
Depending on what you 're looking to achieve, there are a lot of solutions available. XML is an option, JSON another.
If you're looking to build a template, any of the above would seem appropriate.
It sounds like you're working from the Flash IDE, as Jason suggests you may want to have a look at another IDE, such as FlashDevelop, FDT or FlashBuilder as they make coding with AS3 a lot easier.

PDF Security

I have a question about PDF security preferences. Can I change an editable pdf to readable pdf programmatically?
Yes - with for example PDFStamp on Windows (Command line reference)
My Perl CAM::PDF library has a command-line utility called rewritepdf.pl that can do this quite easily with the -P flag. The library exposes this functionality quite easily, too.
Yes, adding security to a PDF which stops people from being able to edit it, is quite easy using a variety of different PDF toolkits (iText, PDFSharp, Quick PDF Library, etc).
PDF encryption may not be honored in some tools.
You can use tools such as PDFLEO to encrypt PDF documents (command line reference)

Resources