rocket777
11-29-2005, 08:53 AM
After searching this forum for a way to handle pdf's I came across the freeware program pdftohtml as mentioned in this formum. So now, I can get pdfs into isilo on my palm using the following somewhat tedious steps:
1. Go to a site, right click and save as a pdf.
2. load up a windows command window
3. type or drag/drop location of pdftohtml, and a space
4. drag/drop pdf icon into command window, type return (this leaves a file *.html along side the *.pdf file I am converting)
5. open internet explorer, blank window
6. drag/drop the converted html onto the i.e. window
7. and finally, click on the isilox Clipper button, and ok the dialog
Whew, lots of steps that would be nice to automate. So, my request would be that in isilox and the clipper, if it sees a pdf file (or even more general, a file of type .xyz), have an option to automatically run this through a conversion program or script file. If a script file, then pass it parameters like the full spec of the input file and output file names.
After it converts it to html, or even just to plain text, then have isilox use this output just as though it had retreived it directly. If the output file is empty, or say just the text "ignore" or some such thing then this could signal that the script could not convert the file. I'm not sure how to return a status portably otherwise, that would be ok.
This shouldn't be too hard to do. And it could be the framework for lots of other post processing options that another poster had requested.
Oh, btw, since this pdf converter generates a number of files, the output locations should probably be in a temp directory since cleanup otherwise might be difficult.
1. Go to a site, right click and save as a pdf.
2. load up a windows command window
3. type or drag/drop location of pdftohtml, and a space
4. drag/drop pdf icon into command window, type return (this leaves a file *.html along side the *.pdf file I am converting)
5. open internet explorer, blank window
6. drag/drop the converted html onto the i.e. window
7. and finally, click on the isilox Clipper button, and ok the dialog
Whew, lots of steps that would be nice to automate. So, my request would be that in isilox and the clipper, if it sees a pdf file (or even more general, a file of type .xyz), have an option to automatically run this through a conversion program or script file. If a script file, then pass it parameters like the full spec of the input file and output file names.
After it converts it to html, or even just to plain text, then have isilox use this output just as though it had retreived it directly. If the output file is empty, or say just the text "ignore" or some such thing then this could signal that the script could not convert the file. I'm not sure how to return a status portably otherwise, that would be ok.
This shouldn't be too hard to do. And it could be the framework for lots of other post processing options that another poster had requested.
Oh, btw, since this pdf converter generates a number of files, the output locations should probably be in a temp directory since cleanup otherwise might be difficult.