Lyx

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Posted by Graham Smith
Jan 4, 2007 at 07:26 AM

Derek

> I’m even considering going back to converting pdf files
>to text. It’s something we both used to do I think.

Yes, I did but this was mainly to do with OCRing the image based files so Zoot could read them, and because although Zoot can read text based files so much of the beginning of a PDF is taken up with header, it was never that useful anyway. Equallly I was linking the text file to the original PDF so it was the original PDF that Zoot opened

I also have may PDFs with images and graphs so text is of limited use for many of the PDFs I store.

>remember that it took a lot of self-discipline in the midst of trawling for
>information on the internet to set aside time to convert and often rename pdf files.
>And leaving it until later meant that it often didn’t get done.

My problem as well :-(

>Another problem of converting to text, and one that I don’t see often mentioned, is that it can sometimes
>increase the risk of unconscious or inadvertent plagiarism.

This hadn’t occurred to me, but I see the point you are making.

But I do think the Text based approach is still very good, and seem to be more and more of a convert.

Graham

Posted by Derek Cornish
Jan 5, 2007 at 01:24 PM

Graham -

> Yes, I did but this was mainly to do with OCRing the image based files so Zoot could read them, and because although Zoot can read text based files so much of the beginning of a PDF is taken up with header, it was never that useful anyway. Equallly I was linking the text file to the original PDF so it was the original PDF that Zoot opened

Yes, I remember that [anyone who is interested, see #3700 in the Archives], but didn’t realise that Zoot had the problem you mention with OCR’d PDF files. As I work mainly with standard non-image PDF files, the text conversion process - done either by the Acrobat reader or xpdf - edited out the header automatically.

It may be my imagination but I seem to come across fewer image PDF files (outside JStor) than I used to. Maybe it’s because I look mainly at government reports. It’s the preponderance of standard pdf files I deal with that is making me think again about using Zoot’s file folder sync feature more often.

If I had to pinpoint one thing that’s given me the most grief over the years it’s been dealing with pdf files - getting the Acrobat Reader to work reliably, getting its plugins to work in different browsers, getting text out of pdf files, getting pdf files indexed and searched. Things are much better nowadays, but I still find the transigence of the pdf format a regular irritation. Maybe I should upgrade to v8 of the Reader, but I’m apprehensive about yet another round of problems :-(.

Derek

Posted by Graham Smith
Jan 5, 2007 at 05:26 PM

Derek,

>imagination but I seem to come across fewer image PDF files (outside JStor) than I used

It is Jstor files that I have the problem with, as I have a local library of downloaded PDFs that I search

>to. Maybe it’s because I look mainly at government reports. It’s the preponderance of
>standard pdf files I deal with that is making me think again about using Zoot’s file
>folder sync feature more often.

>Maybe I should upgrade to v8 of the Reader, but I’m apprehensive about yet another
>round of problems :-(.

I’ve been using it for a few days now and stopped using Foxit. I was using Foxit because of its speed but V8 acrobat is just as fast.

I have also bought V8 professional to use the review features. As I am now really sold on Lyx my grand plan is to send clients PDFs that they can comment on with Acrobat viewer, rather than Doc files that they can edit.

V8 allows you to set up a proper email based review process and dealing with multiple files with comments, once files are returned - or so the brochure says!

I have also started using Emacs to extend the plain text approach, and I am completely amazed at what it can do, but that is another post.

Graham

Posted by Derek Cornish
Jan 5, 2007 at 11:35 PM

Graham -

> I have also started using Emacs to extend the plain text approach, and I am completely amazed at what it can do, but that is another post.

I look forward to hearing more about Emacs. Have you looked at the Vim text editor? There are versions for Windows, see: http://www.vim.org/about.php
There is also an outliner add-on for Vim, I believe. Needless to say Vim has a similar reputation to that of Emacs for difficulty, but as I have never user either of them I’m not sure to what extent this is geek hype and mystification…

Posted by Graham Smith
Jan 6, 2007 at 12:09 AM

Derek

>I look forward to
>hearing more about Emacs. Have you looked at the Vim text editor? There are versions
>for Windows, see: http://www.vim.org/about.php

I will stick with Emacs because it also works as a front end for R (with an add-on)

>There is also an outliner add-on for Vim, I believe.

As there is for Emacs, which also has time management tools, and a tutorial on using it for GTD. there is also a wiki type inofmation management- web publishing add-in, and a bibliographic add-in, Latex, address book, and other planning tools,plus others I haven’t found

>Needless to say Vim has a similar reputation to that of Emacs for
>difficulty, but as I have never user either of them I’m not sure to what extent this is
>geek hype and mystification…

It isn’t easy, configuration is manually by typing into a config file in a home directory you need to set up rather than a nice dialog box, but as there are lots of very clever emac people out there it means you can do some really clever customisations of how emacs works. Getting it to print was fun and games and even now I can only get black and white printing.

Its heavily into key strokes so a lot of initial remembering, but this also means that once learnt, it is very very fast to use.

Menu items and functions change with the context of the file loaded, So if you have a Jabref bibliography (which I am now using) and you want to quickly look something up, you can type “Alt-x bib” and it will open the bibliography data base inside Emacs as a properly formatted bibliographic data base that you can search and edit. “Alt-x tasks” will then open your outline based task list, “alt-x wiki” will open your wiki based information store. etc, and you can do the same thing with an address book, mail client, newsgroup client and even web browser, plus many other things I haven’t grasped. There seems to be a tool called remember, that looks at what you are writing and searches all your existing text based files, and pops up reminders of anything it finds that seems relevant to what you are writing about. Of course you need to set this up in the config file, but it isn’t that difficult.

Working with text is great as there are lots of good navigational key stokes to whiz around your doc and clever keystrokes to transpose letters, words and lines. Its also dead easy to add tables with calculated fields, albeit not very pretty tables.

I certainly now understand why people say they can spend all day working on their computer and never leave emacs.

It still a bit geeky, and you do need to put a lot of work into it. but Lyx and Emacs are the first two programs I have come across for years that have inspired me into thinking the effort is really worth it.

You do have to feel happy with the text only interface of course.

Graham

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