Re: txutils.el - File conversion

[weber]

On 23 ago, 20:37, Tim X <address@hidden> wrote:
> Given the recent posts with code to convert dvi and other files to png and
> display within emacs, I thought a little utility I put together may be
> useful. This utility converts various file formats (doc, pdf, ps, etc) to
> text and displays it in an emacs buffer. There are also facilities to add
> new converters (via customize).
>
> A number of external conversion programs are required (see source file),
> such as wvText, pdftotext, etc.
>
> Tim
>
> ;;      Filename: /home/tcross/projects/emacs-convert/txutils.el
> ;; Creation Date: Wednesday, 20 September 2006 10:13 PM EST
> ;; Last Modified: Monday, 27 November 2006 06:38 PM EST
> ;;       Version: 2.0
> ;;        Author: Tim Cross <address@hidden>
> ;;   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 <address@hidden>
> ;;; 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 address@hidden
> ;;;
> ;;; 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)
>
> --
> tcross (at) rapttech dot com dot au

A bundle of this package and doc-view.el could allow one to view pdf
files (as png) but still isearch them as text (text which would be
associated to each png)... just an idea :)

Cheers,
weber