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| + | This tip shows how to use Vim to view the text in a PDF document. That can be useful to use Vim to see the differences between the text in two versions of a pdf. You need to install [http://www.foolabs.com/xpdf/ xpdf] (available on all major platforms) as it provides the <code>pdftotext</code> utility to read the text from a pdf file. |
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| − | 1. Get [http://www.foolabs.com/xpdf/download.html xpdf] (for pdftotext) and [http://www.physik.uni-wuerzburg.de/~vrbehr/cups-pdf/download.shtml cups-pdf]. Xpdf package is available on all the major platforms. However cups-pdf is not available on Windows. |
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| + | ==Procedure== |
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| − | 2. cups-pdf prints the pdf files and saves them in ~/PDF/ by default. It is assumed that these settings won't be changed. |
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| − | |||
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<pre> |
<pre> |
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| + | :command! -complete=file -nargs=1 Rpdf :r !pdftotext -nopgbrk <q-args> - |
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| − | autocmd BufReadPre *.pdf set ro nowrap |
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| − | + | :command! -complete=file -nargs=1 Rpdf :r !pdftotext -nopgbrk <q-args> - |fmt -csw78 |
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| − | autocmd BufWritePost *.pdf silent !rm -rf ~/PDF/% |
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| − | autocmd BufWritePost *.pdf silent !lp -s -d pdffg "%" |
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| − | autocmd BufWritePost *.pdf silent !until [ -e ~/PDF/% ]; do sleep 1; done |
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| − | autocmd BufWritePost *.pdf silent !mv ~/PDF/% %:p:h |
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</pre> |
</pre> |
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| + | These define the <code>:Rpdf</code> command to read the result of converting a pdf document to text. The text is read into the current buffer after the current line. The first reads the pdf with each paragraph as a long line, while the second wraps long lines (if the <code>fmt</code> utility is available). |
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| − | In a nutshell, the BufWritePost commands remove any file of similar name from ~/PDF, print the pdf to the directory, wait until the file is printed, then move the file to the current location. (Note: pdffg is the name of the pdf printer – check the name of the printer on your machine.) |
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| + | For example, the following commands open a new tab page and read the text from a pdf document into the buffer. |
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| − | Note that if you open an existing pdf, it will be opened in readonly mode. You can write to it using <tt>:w!</tt> but that will remove existing formatting. |
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| ⚫ | |||
| + | :tabnew |
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| + | :Rpdf example.pdf |
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| ⚫ | |||
==See also== |
==See also== |
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*[[VimTip790|View and diff MS Word files]] Uses a similar concept to open Word documents. |
*[[VimTip790|View and diff MS Word files]] Uses a similar concept to open Word documents. |
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| + | *[[VimTip667|Working with CSV files]] Uses a similar concept to open Excel spreadsheets. |
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==Comments== |
==Comments== |
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| + | You could create a ftdetect plugin and put instruction in it so you can just :edit filename.pdf and it'll set options for it. {{help|new-filetype}} |
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| − | Just like for MS-Word files, this allows you to use Vim to diff two pdf files very nicely. |
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| − | ---- |
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| − | |||
| − | If you happen to be on Unix or have the fmt utility, a slight improvement is: |
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| − | autocmd BufReadPost *.pdf %!pdftotext -nopgbrk "%" - |fmt -cw78 |
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| ⚫ | |||
| − | |||
| − | ---- |
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| − | Or, better still: |
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| − | <pre> |
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| − | autocmd BufReadPost *.pdf %!pdftotext -nopgbrk "%" - |fmt -csw78 |
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| − | </pre> |
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| − | |||
| − | ---- |
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| − | Add silent and you don't need to press enter: |
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| − | <pre> |
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| − | autocmd BufReadPost *.pdf silent %!pdftotext -nopgbrk "%" - |fmt -csw78 |
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| − | </pre> |
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| − | |||
| − | ---- |
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| − | You may want to call pdftotext with parameter <tt>-layout</tt> -- tries to maintain the original layout of pages. This doesn't compress all the page into one chunk of text. |
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| − | |||
| − | ---- |
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| − | Win32 users: pdftotext comes as part of the CygWin Suite http://www.cygwin.com/ |
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| − | Please don't install cygwin just for pdftotext. Use the link to the xpdf-files, as the author suggests. There is a pdftotext for Win32 as well. |
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| − | |||
| − | ---- |
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Latest revision as of 18:59, 19 June 2014
This tip shows how to use Vim to view the text in a PDF document. That can be useful to use Vim to see the differences between the text in two versions of a pdf. You need to install xpdf (available on all major platforms) as it provides the pdftotext utility to read the text from a pdf file.
Procedure[]
Put one of the following mappings in your vimrc:
:command! -complete=file -nargs=1 Rpdf :r !pdftotext -nopgbrk <q-args> - :command! -complete=file -nargs=1 Rpdf :r !pdftotext -nopgbrk <q-args> - |fmt -csw78
These define the :Rpdf command to read the result of converting a pdf document to text. The text is read into the current buffer after the current line. The first reads the pdf with each paragraph as a long line, while the second wraps long lines (if the fmt utility is available).
For example, the following commands open a new tab page and read the text from a pdf document into the buffer.
:tabnew :Rpdf example.pdf
See also[]
- View and diff MS Word files Uses a similar concept to open Word documents.
- Working with CSV files Uses a similar concept to open Excel spreadsheets.
Comments[]
You could create a ftdetect plugin and put instruction in it so you can just :edit filename.pdf and it'll set options for it. :help new-filetype