info
Google Groups no longer supports new Usenet posts or subscriptions. Historical content remains viewable.
Dismiss
Re: Redirect output from less to text editor
7 views
Skip to first unread message
Spiros Bousbouras
Apr 21, 2022, 11:07:17 AM4/21/22
to
On Thu, 21 Apr 2022 15:47:32 +0100
Ottavio Caruso <ottavio2006...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> I can view a simplified version of a pdf file with less:
>
> $ less file.pdf
>
> If I press "v" an editor will open but it will show all the pdf garbage.
>
> I would like to redirect the formatted output from less to a text
> editor, for example xed or pluma.
>
> 1)Is there a more elegant way than:
>
>
> $ less file.pdf > /tmp/file.txt && xed /tmp/file.txt
>
> ?
If the editors in question support an option to read from stdin then you can
use that through a pipe. Othherwise I can't think of anything. Beyond that ,
I don't think that less really does any formatting , it just wraps lines
and perhaps a bit more. A decent text editor should be able to do this on its
own so I'm not clear why you want to involve less .Note that there is also
the fmt utility to wrap lines.
> and 2)
>
> Any way to clean up unprintable characters before sending them to xed?
As long as you have a clear idea what the unprintable characters are , then
you can use sed .For example
sed -e 's/\o000//g' -e 's/\o001//g' file.pdf
will omit octets with value 0 or 1. I think the \o000 syntax is GNU
specific.
--
vlaho.ninja/prog
Ottavio Caruso <ottavio2006...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> I can view a simplified version of a pdf file with less:
>
> $ less file.pdf
>
> If I press "v" an editor will open but it will show all the pdf garbage.
>
> I would like to redirect the formatted output from less to a text
> editor, for example xed or pluma.
>
> 1)Is there a more elegant way than:
>
>
> $ less file.pdf > /tmp/file.txt && xed /tmp/file.txt
>
> ?
If the editors in question support an option to read from stdin then you can
use that through a pipe. Othherwise I can't think of anything. Beyond that ,
I don't think that less really does any formatting , it just wraps lines
and perhaps a bit more. A decent text editor should be able to do this on its
own so I'm not clear why you want to involve less .Note that there is also
the fmt utility to wrap lines.
> and 2)
>
> Any way to clean up unprintable characters before sending them to xed?
As long as you have a clear idea what the unprintable characters are , then
you can use sed .For example
sed -e 's/\o000//g' -e 's/\o001//g' file.pdf
will omit octets with value 0 or 1. I think the \o000 syntax is GNU
specific.
--
vlaho.ninja/prog
Chris Elvidge
Apr 21, 2022, 12:59:56 PM4/21/22
to
On 21/04/2022 15:47, Ottavio Caruso wrote:
> I can view a simplified version of a pdf file with less:
>
> $ less file.pdf
>
> If I press "v" an editor will open but it will show all the pdf garbage.
>
> I would like to redirect the formatted output from less to a text
> editor, for example xed or pluma.
>
> 1)Is there a more elegant way than:
>
>
> $ less file.pdf > /tmp/file.txt && xed /tmp/file.txt
>
> ?
>
> I can view a simplified version of a pdf file with less:
>
> $ less file.pdf
>
> If I press "v" an editor will open but it will show all the pdf garbage.
>
> I would like to redirect the formatted output from less to a text
> editor, for example xed or pluma.
>
> 1)Is there a more elegant way than:
>
>
> $ less file.pdf > /tmp/file.txt && xed /tmp/file.txt
>
> ?
>
> and 2)
>
> Any way to clean up unprintable characters before sending them to xed?
>
without using less : pdftotext?
>
> Any way to clean up unprintable characters before sending them to xed?
>
--
Chris Elvidge
England
Eli the Bearded
Apr 21, 2022, 1:55:10 PM4/21/22
to
In comp.unix.shell, Ottavio Caruso <ottavio2006...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> I can view a simplified version of a pdf file with less:
>
> $ less file.pdf
>
> If I press "v" an editor will open but it will
> show all the pdf garbage.
pdftotext is the typical tool for turning a PDF into text (but it
> I can view a simplified version of a pdf file with less:
>
> $ less file.pdf
>
> If I press "v" an editor will open but it will
> show all the pdf garbage.
doesn't OCR images, so it's not always an ideal tool). It sounds like
you are getting a 'strings' like output from less. That's probably less
useful, unless you really do want the comments in the PDF.
Elijah
------
"views" binary files in vim sometimes
Keith Thompson
Apr 21, 2022, 2:07:36 PM4/21/22
to
Ottavio Caruso <ottavio2006...@yahoo.com> writes:
> I can view a simplified version of a pdf file with less:
>
> $ less file.pdf
If that works (it doesn't for me) then you probably have less configured
> I can view a simplified version of a pdf file with less:
>
> $ less file.pdf
to use an input preprocessor via $LESSOPEN. "man less" for details.
> If I press "v" an editor will open but it will show all the pdf garbage.
>
> I would like to redirect the formatted output from less to a text
> editor, for example xed or pluma.
>
> 1)Is there a more elegant way than:
>
>
> $ less file.pdf > /tmp/file.txt && xed /tmp/file.txt
>
> ?
>
> and 2)
>
> Any way to clean up unprintable characters before sending them to xed?
You can probably use the same filter used by LESSOPEN.
> editor, for example xed or pluma.
>
> 1)Is there a more elegant way than:
>
>
> $ less file.pdf > /tmp/file.txt && xed /tmp/file.txt
>
> ?
>
> and 2)
>
> Any way to clean up unprintable characters before sending them to xed?
--
Keith Thompson (The_Other_Keith) Keith.S.T...@gmail.com
Working, but not speaking, for Philips
void Void(void) { Void(); } /* The recursive call of the void */
Javier
Apr 21, 2022, 8:53:59 PM4/21/22
to
Ottavio Caruso <ottavio2006...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> I can view a simplified version of a pdf file with less:
>
> $ less file.pdf
>
> I can view a simplified version of a pdf file with less:
>
> $ less file.pdf
>
> If I press "v" an editor will open but it will show all the pdf garbage.
>
> I would like to redirect the formatted output from less to a text
> editor, for example xed or pluma.
>
> 1)Is there a more elegant way than:
>
> $ less file.pdf > /tmp/file.txt && xed /tmp/file.txt
There is vipe from the moreutils package to edit/view in an external
>
> I would like to redirect the formatted output from less to a text
> editor, for example xed or pluma.
>
> 1)Is there a more elegant way than:
>
> $ less file.pdf > /tmp/file.txt && xed /tmp/file.txt
program the content of stdout inside a pipeline.
https://joeyh.name/code/moreutils/
$ less file.pdf | EDITOR=xed vipe
> and 2)
>
> Any way to clean up unprintable characters before sending them to xed?
$ less file.pdf | strings | EDITOR=xed vipe
But being pdf files I would rather use dedicated tools like pdftotext
from poppler or pdf2txt from pdfminer
http://www.unixuser.org/~euske/python/pdfminer/
lesspipe.sh (as Keith Thompson suggested to look at) uses pdftotext for
pdf files.
Javier
Apr 21, 2022, 9:25:52 PM4/21/22
to
Javier <inv...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
> or pdf2txt from pdfminer
>
> http://www.unixuser.org/~euske/python/pdfminer/
Unfortunately pdf2txt is extremely hard to make it work inside a
> or pdf2txt from pdfminer
>
> http://www.unixuser.org/~euske/python/pdfminer/
pipeline as it asks for seekable output.
Janis Papanagnou
Apr 22, 2022, 8:36:40 AM4/22/22
to
On 22.04.2022 11:55, Ottavio Caruso wrote:
> pdftotext is horrible. It doesn't remove odd characters and messes up
> with formatting.
>
Interesting. - I just tried it on a letter written in German and one
written in Greek - with certainly a lot of "odd" characters (from an
ASCII point of view) -; both perfectly readable. - I'm curious what
the characters are that mess up the formatting in your environment.
Janis
> with formatting.
>
Interesting. - I just tried it on a letter written in German and one
written in Greek - with certainly a lot of "odd" characters (from an
ASCII point of view) -; both perfectly readable. - I'm curious what
the characters are that mess up the formatting in your environment.
Janis
0 new messages