Hacking ExtendedPDF to work with Evolution? (1 Viewer)

[Hedon James]

Hey Guys,

I've been slowly working towards replacing my Windows production box with a Linux system and have successfully found replacements/workarounds for nearly every function I need. Thank you to everyone who has helped with that mission!

At this point, I beleive I have a working "proto-type production box" for my commercial real estate appraisal business, except making PDF files from my MS Outlook contact manager. On occassion, I need to convert an e-mail or task into a PDF, with hyperlinks intact, for insertion into the addenda of a PDF appraisal report.

I'm currently using Evolution as a MS Outlook replacement, as it seems to be an adequate substitute in form as well as function. I have located several PDF creation programs, and even virtual PDF printers, but they do not have hyperlink functionality; they just convert hyperlinks to a blue underlined font, without the link.

As a workaround, I've been copying & pasting into OpenOfficeWriter and converting to PDF from within OO; this works beautifully, except I lose any graphics formatting in the process. After some research, I've learned that OpenOffice PDF creation is done by ExtendedPDF, which is a macro script, and available for download as a plug-in module for prior OO versions from 2 to the present 3.x. This got me to thinking, is there a way to install or "HACK" this macro to work as a virtual printer within Evolution?

The installation guide I downloaded with the extendedPDF module seems to indicate it will only work with StarOffice and OpenOffice, by modifying some text in a *admin file for printer spooling. Seems to me this could be done to install ExtendedPDF as a virtual PDF printer for any program that converts from text? Do any of you Linux software/programmer gurus have any thoughts on this? Possible, or not? If so, how?

Alternatively, although I like the Gnome Evolution program, I'm not married to it yet; KDE Kontact looks like a viable alternative in form and function, and perhaps that program will allow me to convert e-mail/tasks to PDF with hyperlinks with some minor tweakage? Anyone here done that yet?

If I want to press this issue without modifying my workflow, it looks like my options are:

1. Find a contact/e-mail/task manager that provides for PDF hyperlink conversion
2. Modify or "hack" my Evolution program; preferably with Extended PDF that I know works
3. Hope that developers/programmers eventually add this feature to compete with MS Outlook

You guys have been awesome with all of your prior alternative suggestions. I will eagerly await whatever great ideas you come up with this time!!! Thanks in advance guys!

 

[TheDeparted]

Sent you a PM

 

[Hedon James]

Sent you a PM

Haven't found a solution yet. I thought I was technically inclined until I started lurking & posting on this forum...and realized there are people on here A LOT smarter than me, talking in "languages and dialects" I don't understand. But I can usually pick up enough info to figure out what I need to do.

Thank you for your offer! I appreciate ANY information you can provide, even if it doesn't solve the problem! If you don't mind, please post here so that others can chime in with ideas, or obtain the same knowledge I'm trying to learn.

Thank you...can't wait to hear more about your idea!

 

[Buickman]

I have no idea if it'll do what you need, but have you looked into Mozilla's Thunderbird? It's an email client from the same folks that did Firefox.

 

[llama]

I'm a bit drunk, but to reiterate: your issue isn't the creation of html links (or bookmarks within a PDF) from OOo, but that you want to print from Evolution, and for any links that are in the email to remain "hot"? Correct?

1) Have you installed the cups-pdf package yet? This is different and separate from OOo's ability to create PDF files. Evince does show links (as you probably know) but they aren't clickable with either a direct click, double-click, or control-click (control-click is used inside of OOo).

I'm wondering if the problem is Evince (the default PDF viewer on recent GNOME versions). I'm going to print out the default Evolution welcome message and see if I can click on the links from inside of Acrobat (in Windows).

Have you tried that yet?

===

That works, by the way. So the issue may be finding a PDF viewer that recognizes html links.

 

[Hedon James]

I'm a bit drunk, but to reiterate: your issue isn't the creation of html links (or bookmarks within a PDF) from OOo, but that you want to print from Evolution, and for any links that are in the email to remain "hot"? Correct?

1) Have you installed the cups-pdf package yet? This is different and separate from OOo's ability to create PDF files. Evince does show links (as you probably know) but they aren't clickable with either a direct click, double-click, or control-click (control-click is used inside of OOo).

I'm wondering if the problem is Evince (the default PDF viewer on recent GNOME versions). I'm going to print out the default Evolution welcome message and see if I can click on the links from inside of Acrobat (in Windows).

Have you tried that yet?

===

That works, by the way. So the issue may be finding a PDF viewer that recognizes html links.

Damn Llama...even drunk, you are one clever SOB!!!

I have cups-pdf, a generic PDF virtual printer, and PDF Creator virtual printer on my Linux machine, as well as the OO ExtendedPDF macro and have tried isolating each program as the "weak link". With OO doing such a good job with hyperlink conversion, but with each virtual PDF printer in Evolution providing the same result, I naturally concluded the PDF creation process was the issue; I never considered the viewer, as I could view clickable links in the OO pdf viewer.

Ironically, the Evolution initial Welcome message is also my "test PDF" due to the graphics and hyperlinks, both of which are items I want to PDF on occassion. I sent that PDF message to my Windows box and viewed in Adobe and VOILA....clicked the hyperlinks!!! It would appear that my Evince PDF reader is the issue, not the PDF creator...quite a revelation, and a bit of relief, as there are very limited PDF creator options in Linux, but seemingly hundreds of PDF viewer options!

Which begs the next question...can anyone recommend a Linux PDF viewer that allows me to click through hyperlinks in a PDF document?!!! Which viewer does the OO suite use for PDFs, as that viewer obviously works?

Once again, you guys on this board are amazing!!! I have posted this same question on the Ubuntu community forum; on Bugzilla (thinking it was a program fault); on Major Geeks; and asked some of my local Linux friends. My friends had no clue and everyone on the aforemention public forums completely ignored the question/request...NOT 1 RESPONSE, despite re-posting upon expiration. I'm guessing there were no responses because the (potentially) hundreds/thousands of eyes who saw it had no idea of the solution either. Which brings me back to my SR.com friends....AMAZING....you guys have provided a solution, or at least a correct troubleshoot diagnosis, EVERY TIME!!!! And every time, it's someone different...hmmmmm....just like the Saints! I'm starting to think that, in the future, when I'm done banging my head against the proverbial brick wall, I should just ask you guys FIRST?!!!

THANK YOU!

 

[Hedon James]

Hmmm....

Just created a hyperlink PDF with the OO "export to pdf" function and the document viewer is Evince...same as the Evolution virtual PDF printer.

Why does Evince "see" hyperlink functionality from OO but not the virtual PDF printer? And if Adobe "sees" hyperlinks from the virtual PDF printer, is the PDF creation software or the PDF viewer the offender? I'm confused again...

 

[TheDeparted]

Oh good, someone with some practical Linux experience showed up. I figured there was a simple solution somewhere.

 

[Buickman]

Damn Llama...even drunk, you are one clever SOB!!!

That's hilarious, and I second it. If it wasn't for Llama and eaux-yeah I'd still be sitting there trying to boot from a live cd.

Which begs the next question...can anyone recommend a Linux PDF viewer that allows me to click through hyperlinks in a PDF document?!!! Which viewer does the OO suite use for PDFs, as that viewer obviously works?

Have you tried Acroread? It's Adobe's Acrobat Reader for Linux. I would think that would display hyperlinks if anything does. I think you have to enabe the Medibuntu repository to get it....

sudo wget http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/$(lsb_release -cs).list --output-document=/etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list

sudo aptitude update && sudo aptitude install medibuntu-keyring && sudo aptitude update

sudo update-apt-xapian-index

Then you can install it from synaptic or just run

sudo apt-get install acroread

I'll try it myself when I get home.

 

[llama]

sudo update-apt-xapian-index

I've never seen that one before. Interesting to read up on.

BTW, the package acroread isn't in the repositories.

http://www.ubuntugeek.com/install-acrobat-reader-in-ubuntu-9-10-karmic.html

You can grab the deb from there. It redirects you to Adobe's site. The package is huge at 60mb.

###

Acroread installed, and it respects html links perfectly. [solved thanks to buickman]

 

[Hedon James]

I've got Ubuntu 9.10, so I just installed Adobe Reader 9 from the repository and problem solved. Thanks for the fresh perspective Llama; I never would've solved that on my own!

I guess I'll be creating PDF from OO and cups-pdf virtual printer, viewing them in Adobe, and splitting/merging/deleting from pdfsam or PDF-Shuffler. In the meantime, I hope some enterprising programmer/developer will roll all those programs into a single comprehensive PDF management package that will compete as the Linux equivalent of Adobe. Then again, if Adobe has a Linux version package, I'm not averse to paying for it if it does what I want it to!

Thanks guys!

 

[llama]

I'm successfully using gscan2pdf to scan in my documents on a Brother MFC8860-DN scanner (after installing Brother's deb). I like gscan2pdf a LOT. It's no PaperPort, but it does make scanning quite easy to do. I have deleted pages, but haven't had need to add/merge any yet.

 

[Hedon James]

I'm successfully using gscan2pdf to scan in my documents on a Brother MFC8860-DN scanner (after installing Brother's deb). I like gscan2pdf a LOT. It's no PaperPort, but it does make scanning quite easy to do. I have deleted pages, but haven't had need to add/merge any yet.

Sorry to jack my own thread, but it's a related topic...

I've heard of gscan2pdf, but haven't used it yet. My Ubuntu 9.10 came with XSane Image scanner pre-installed, but I can't test the software because it doesn't find a scanner plugged in. I haven't hooked up a scanner to Linux yet, but I've got an old HP scanner laying around that would be perfect for testing that. Any experience with XSane? What's the difference between XSane and gscan2pdf?

Funny you should mention Paperport, as that is one of my favorite Windows programs; but as long as I have a scanner with PDF capability, I can easily duplicate the Paperport directory & filing structure and be good to go!

 

[llama]

gscan2pdf is a front end to perl-sane I believe. They both rely on SANE, so to simplify it, gscan2pdf is a nice front end for XSane. The trick is getting your scanner recognized though.

I'd plug the one you have around in and see if it is recognized.

 

[eaux-yeah]

If using cups-pdf, know that there are many configuration setting that can be tweaked to do all kinds of things.
Look at the /etc/cups/cups-pdf.conf file.

Just like OO uses ExtendedPDF as the backend, most all apps do something similar.
As long as the app uses stdin/stdout, you might be very surprised how easy it is to build something yourself.
http://learnlinux.tsf.org.za/courses/build/shell-scripting/ch01s04.html

There are too many apps to list that can convert and manipulate files to and from PDF.
Here is a good start:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=linux+2+pdf&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=


I no longer use Evolution (too bloated for me) and have been w/Claws-Mail for the past couple years.
One example would be to save mail as html, then maybe use sed/awk to strip out any unwanted cruft, and pipe that into something like htmldoc.
Could even eliminate the GUI mail client altogether and use something like getmail (replaces fetchmail)/procmail combo to pull mail and pipe that into your script?
If I knew exactly what you needed, I could whip you up a simple bash script for ya.

I'm successfully using gscan2pdf to scan in my documents on a Brother MFC8860-DN scanner (after installing Brother's deb).

Thanx for that.
I'm still doing the old school thing. Scan w/Xsane save as image --> use Imagemagick's "convert" to .ps --> output that to pstopdf.
after checking out the gscan2pdf site, looks like that does the same type of thing except using perl?


BTW, I dispise Adobe Acrobat. OK, anything Adobe.
If you have the kdelibs installed (should be if you run anything kde), check out Oklular, it is very nice.
http://okular.kde.org