Month: March 2013

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Tutorial: Merge multiple RTF files into a single PDF

A recent task of mine involved generating a large quantity of forms (around 2,500) and printing them. I was using PHP as the generator – it’s great at processing and transforming text. And my base (template) file was originally created as a Word document, converted to RTF for ease of processing.

There is no easy and free way of printing out 2,500 RTF files from Windows, not that I’ve been able to find. It didn’t make sense to pay for a £200 application for something that I do so infrequently. So here is my (free) approach.

Make Linux do the hard work

If you’ve followed my “Easily host your own web sites” series, you’ll now have a Linux server at your disposal that you can bend to your will. When it comes to command line or scripted activities (which this tutorial lends itself to), Linux/Unix is simply more mature than Windows. This means that someone, somewhere has probably already created a tool for whatever activity you’re thinking of and moreover, made that tool free.

Converting to PDF: Ted

Ted is a fairly full-featured text processor for Linux. We’ll just be using some of Ted’s command line wizardry today.

Installing Ted

Ted logoYou can download a Ted package here. I’m installing this on an Ubuntu 12.04.1 machine so I chose this package: ubuntu12041:ted-2.23-amd64.deb.

I keep all third party packages I install in a directory, /root/installed-packages, for future reference. So this is what I did, from a command line (SSH connection). First, I know that Ted has some dependencies, so I dealt with those:

apt-get update
apt-get install libxpm4 libtiff4 libgtk2.0-0 libpaper1
apt-get -f install

Then downloaded and install Ted:

wget http://ftp.nluug.nl/pub/editors/ted/ubuntu12041:ted-2.23-amd64.deb
dpkg -i ubuntu12041\:ted-2.23-amd64.deb

Combining files: pdfmerge

Abiding by the principle of “do one thing well”, guess what pdfmerge does?

Installing pdfmerge

If you’re using a RedHat-derived distribution, you’re in luck, there’s a pre-built package. If you’re using Ubuntu though, here goes. Download the source [iwrtooltip title=”a compressed archive of files”]tarball[/iwrtooltip] from here. Again, I’m starting in my directory /root/installed-packages.

wget http://dmaphy.github.com/pdfmerge/pdfmerge-1.0.4.tar.bz2
tar jxf pdfmerge-1.0.4.tar.bz2
cp pdfmerge-1.0.4/pdfmerge /usr/local/bin
rm -rf pdfmerge-1.0.4

Put it all together

Now the utilities are installed, you can run the following simple bash script to convert your individual RTF files into PDFs, then merge them all into a single PDF. I put the RTF files in one directory, then the PDF into the directory above it in the directory tree. We use a script that is bundled with Ted – you may need to check the precise location.

for filename in ./*.rtf
do
/usr/share/Ted/examples/rtf2pdf.sh $filename
done;
pdfmerge *.pdf ../all.pdf

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Mark de Does for Ted and to Dominic Hopf for pdfmerge.

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Self-hosted alternative to Google Reader: selfoss

No no no! Google has just announced it is shutting down Reader on 1 July 2013.

Personally, I can’t really understand this. It is a good product, with surely plenty of advertising and marketing opportunities. Nevertheless, there’s no point railing against the decision. It was “free”. It was good while it lasted. I shouldn’t complain.

Like many people, this leaves me scrabbling around for an alternative. There are one or two similar web-based services out there, but having been burnt once by the whim of a content publisher, I would rather take my destiny into my own hands going forwards. In short, this means setting up a web-based RSS reader on my own server.

There are a few features I’ve come to regard as indispensable in a news reader:

  • Keyboard shortcuts
  • Desktop- and mobile-friendly interfaces
  • No limits on number of subscriptions
  • Responsive (uses Ajax)

selfoss logoIt didn’t take too much searching to find a solution that looked ideal: selfoss. The author describes selfoss as:

The new multipurpose rss reader, live stream, mashup, aggregation web application

The features of selfoss that stood out most to me were:

  • web based
  • open source
  • mobile support (Android, iOS, iPad)
  • lightweight PHP application
  • supports MySQL

There are one or two similar projects out there, but selfoss most closely fits my requirements and seems to be in a good state of development. Interestingly, within 36 hours of Google’s announcement it was retiring Reader, a selfoss user called Michael Moore had written code for selfoss to import OPML files – which is the format we’ll be exporting from Google.

Preparing your web server

If you’ve followed my guide to DIY web hosting, you’ll be able to do what I did:

  • Create a new virtual server in Virtualmin (e.g. myfeeds.fredbloggs.com)
  • Configure my external DNS host to point to this new website (I host my main domains with GoDaddy and manage this through its DNS control panel)
  • Configure my local DNS server similarly (I run an internal DNS server, to avoid the problem of hairpin NAT)
  • Set up a dedicated MySQL user for the new database Virtualmin created

Installing selfoss

Update: In a very short space of time since writing this article, selfoss went through several updates and feature improvements. The current version is 2.6 and better than ever. You can download that straight from the official website.

Really quite simple:

  • Download the latest zip file from GitHub to the root directory of your new virtual web site: eg wget https://github.com/SSilence/selfoss/archive/master.zip. At the time of writing, version 2.2, which is the version that includes OPML import, is only available on GitHub, not on the main selfoss website.
  • Unzip: unzip master.zip
  • Move files into place: mv selfoss-master/* .; mv selfoss-master/.* .
  • Tidy up: rm -r master.zip selfoss-master
  • Set permissions as described on the selfoss website: chmod a+w data/cache data/favicons data/logs data/thumbnails data/sqlite public/
  • Edit config.ini. You’ll probably want to change db_type to mysql, and set db_database, db_username and db_password. You may also want to set username and password. You actually enter a hash of the password here, rather than the password in plain text. To generate this hash, browse to selfoss/password (e.g. http://myfeeds.fredbloggs.com/password)
  • You’ll most likely update feeds using a cron job. Every 30 minutes is enough for me, so I made an entry in /etc/crontab like this: 10,40 * * * * fredbloggs wget -O - -q -t 1 http://myfeeds.fredbloggs.com/update

Migrating from Google Reader

The first step is to export your existing RSS subscriptions from Google Reader. Proceed as follows:

  • Log into Google Takeout, Google’s data export service.
  • Ensure “Reader” is displayed and click “Create archive”
  • Click “Download”
  • You should receive a zip file that contains (amongst other things) your RSS subscriptions in an XML file called “subscriptions.xml”. Extract that file.
  • In version 2.2, at least, there’s no direct link to selfoss’s new OPML import page, so type /opml in your browser (e.g. http://myfeeds.fredbloggs.com/opml)
  • Upload the subscriptions.xml file
  • Click the “Update” link to force selfoss to commence loading your feeds.
  • Start whizzing through your RSS feed using the keyboard shortcuts >t< ("throw" - i.e. mark this item as read and open next item) and >r< (reload current view)

Be sure to add my RSS feed to selfoss for more great articles! http://pomeroy.me/feed/.

selfoss code and logo copyright © Tobias Zeising. All rights acknowledged.

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Product Review: SoundWave SW100 Portable Bluetooth Speaker

As for many other people, my phone has become my go-to device for all my mobile entertainment needs. I currently have a Samsung Galaxy Note 2 (yeah, the one with the ludicrously large screen), so it’s great for anything from internet browsing to watching films in HD quality. I also use it as an MP3 player and for listening to podcasts and audiobooks.

I recently started looking around for a portable speaker that I could take on my occasional travels and, not to put too fine a point on it, use in the bathroom. Surely I’m not the only one that likes to listen to audio books while I shower?

The Note 2 isn’t, er, noted for its high quality speakers. Very few smartphone manufacturers have been able to complete with Apple on this front. But even the mighty built-in speakers of an iPhone struggle to compete with the noise of my geyser-like shower or electric shaver.

I’ll be honest, I’m a bit of a tightwad when it comes to my technology purchases, so I was looking for a device that could combine the impossible qualities of sound quality, power and cheapness. I wanted the convenience of connecting by Bluetooth, with the option of a 3.5mm socket for greater flexibility.

Having considered many products and read a lot of reviews, the device I settled for was this, the SoundWave SW100:

SoundWave SW100 Front

Here are some vital statistics:

  • Small – about three inches tall
  • Reasonably light – I haven’t put it on the scales, but it feels about the same weight as my Note 2 + case
  • Loud – I can’t find any official information on wattage, but when I turned it up to max in my small kitchen, it was louder than I could tolerate; at that point, there was some mild distortion
  • Built-in microphone – theoretically you can therefore use this device for conference calls; I have not tried this, but for the sound alone it can only be better than putting your phone into speaker mode
  • A claimed 10 hours music/talk time
  • A claimed 800 hours standby time – I’m not sure what use this figure is though; I’ll either be using it or charging it

Out of the box, the speaker was fully charged in less than an hour. It comes with a microUSB cable for this purpose. For my first trial, I took it into my company’s noisy server room. About 80% volume was sufficient to hear music clearly and without distortion, over the cacophony of fans and aircon.

It paired over Bluetooth without fuss. I have noticed the occasional blip when playing through Bluetooth, but I think this is more likely to be down to the phone (of which I demand a lot!) than to the speaker. In any event, you can use a 3.5mm audio cable (supplied) if you prefer.

The speaker has a non-slip base, great for most surfaces. The manufacturers have thoughtfully included an additional non-slip mat, making the speaker very unlikely to budge during normal usage. The non-slip mat also slightly neutralises the effect of resonance transmitted through the surface on which you place the speaker. Unless you’re an audiophile (I confess I’m not), this probably won’t mean a lot, but for some, it will be important.

SoundWave SW100 Back

For the size of the speaker, I was impressed by the bass response. In fact this was one of the reasons I bought the speaker – to improve bass experience, without having to lug around a sub woofer and without having to spend thousands on a high-end miniaturised speaker system.

Build quality is good. The case is mainly brushed aluminium, and not unattractive. It passed the spouse test; no exclamations of,”Oh how hideous! What horrendous technological monstrosity is that?!”

I paid £20 for the speaker. Although at one time it was available for less, it is still a bargain at this price. It receives favourable reviews (wherever you look) and I can only confirm what other reviewers are saying. Well worth the money, especially when you can consider you can pay four times the price for a product that may have a pretty label but is otherwise no better.

Conclusion

If you want a portable speaker, on the go, don’t mind that the output is mono, and don’t expect the sound to fill a concert hall, this is the device for you. Highly recommended.