Hack 56 Add PDF Attachment Actions to Windows Context Menus

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Hack 56 Add PDF Attachment Actions to Windows Context Menus

Pack or unpack PDF attachments from the Windows File Explorer with a quick right-click .

It's best to perform simple tasks in a simple manner, especially when you must perform them often. Wire pdftk [Hack #79] into Windows Explorer so that you can pack or unpack attachments using PDF's right-click context menu.

5.7.1 Create the Attach File Context Menu Item

In Windows XP and Windows 2000:

In the Windows File Explorer menu, open Tools Folder Options . . . and click the File Types tab. Select the PDF file type and click the Advanced button.
Click the New . . . button and a New Action dialog appears. Give the new action the name Attach File .
Give the action an application to open by clicking the Browse . . . button and selecting cmd.exe , which lives somewhere such as C:\windows\system32\ (Windows XP) or C:\winnt\system32\ (Windows 2000).

Add these arguments after cmd.exe , changing the path to suit, like so:

C:\windows\system32\cmd.exe

/C C:\windows\system32\pdftk.exe "%1" attach_file PROMPT output PROMPT

Click OK, OK, OK and you should be done with the configuration.

5.7.2 Create the Unpack Attachments Context Menu Item

Follow the previous procedure, except name the action Unpack Attachments and replace the cmd.exe arguments in step 4 with:

/C C:\windows\system32\pdftk.exe "%1" unpack_files

5.7.3 Using Attach File or Unpack Attachments

Right-click your PDF of interest and select Attach File or Unpack Attachments from the context menu. A command prompt will open and ask for additional information. Upon success, the command prompt will close. If pdftk has trouble executing your request, the command prompt will remain open with a message. Press Enter to close this message.

Use drag-and-drop to quickly enter the filenames for the files you want to attach. Select a file in Explorer, drag it over to the command-line window, and drop it. Its full filename will appear at the cursor. This works for only one file at a time.

If you invoke one of these commands on a selection of multiple PDFs, you will get one command prompt for each PDF.

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Hack 57 Create a Traditional Index Section from Keywords

Add a search feature to your print edition .

Creating a good document Index section is a difficult job performed by professionals. However, an automatically generated index still can be very helpful. Use automatic keywords [Hack #19] or select your own keywords. This hack will locate their pages, build a reference, and then create PDF pages that you can append to your document, as shown in Figure 5-5. It even uses your PDF's page labels (also known as logical page numbering ) to ensure trouble-free lookup.

Figure 5-5. Turning document keywords into a PDF Index section

5.8.1 Tool Up

Download and install pdftotext [Hack #19] , our kw_index [Hack #19] , and pdftk [Hack #79] . You must also have enscript (Windows users visit http://gnuwin32.sf.net/packages/enscript.htm ) and ps2pdf. ps2pdf comes with Ghostscript [Hack #39] . Our kw_index package includes the kw_catcher and page_refs programs (and source code) that we use in the following sections.

5.8.2 The Procedure

First, set your PDF's logical page numbering [Hack #62] to match your document's page numbering. Then, use pdftk to dump this information into a text file, like so:


pdftk



mydoc.pdf



dump_data output



mydoc.data.txt

Next, convert your PDF to plain text with pdftotext:


pdftotext



mydoc.pdf mydoc.txt

Create a keyword list [Hack #19] from mydoc.txt using kw_catcher, like so:


kw_catcher



12



keywords_only



mydoc.txt



>



mydoc.kw.txt

Edit mydoc.kw.txt to remove duds and add missing keywords. At present, only one keyword is allowed per line. If two or more keywords are adjacent in mydoc.txt , our page_refs program will assemble them into phrases.

Now pull all these together to create a text index using page_refs:


page_refs



mydoc.txt mydoc.kw.txt mydoc.data.txt



>



mydoc.index.txt

Finally, create a PDF from mydoc.index.txt using enscript and ps2pdf:


enscript --columns 2 --font 'Times-Roman@10' \


--header 'INDEX' --header-font 'Times-Bold@14' \


--margins 54:54:36:54 --word-wrap --output -



mydoc.index.txt



\


ps2pdf -



mydoc.index.pdf

5.8.3 The Code

Of course, the thing to do is to wrap this procedure into a tidy script. Copy the following Bourne shell script into a file named make_index.sh , and make it executable by applying chmod 700 . Windows users can get a Bourne shell by installing MSYS [Hack #97] .

#!/bin/sh

# make_index.sh, version 1.0

# usage: make_index.sh <PDF filename> <page window>

# requires: pdftk, kw_catcher, page_refs,

#           pdftotext, enscript, ps2pdf

#

# by Ross Presser, Imtek.com

# adapted by Sid Steward

# http://www.pdfhacks.com/kw_index/



fname=`basename  .pdf`

pdftk ${fname}.pdf dump_data output ${fname}.data.txt && \

pdftotext ${fname}.pdf ${fname}.txt && \

kw_catcher  keywords_only ${fname}.txt \

 page_refs ${fname}.txt - ${fname}.data.txt \

 enscript --columns 2 --font 'Times-Roman@10' \

  --header 'INDEX' --header-font 'Times-Bold@14' \

  --margins 54:54:36:54 --word-wrap --output - \

 ps2pdf - ${fname}.index.pdf

5.8.4 Running the Hack

Pass the name of your PDF document and the kw_catcher window size to make_index.sh like so:


make_index.sh



mydoc.pdf 12

The script will create a document index named mydoc.index.pdf . Review this index and append it to your PDF document [Hack #51] if you desire . The script also creates two intermediate files: mydoc.data.txt and mydoc.txt . If the PDF index is faulty, review these intermediate files for problems. Delete them when you are satisfied with the PDF index.

The second argument to make_index.sh controls the keyword detection sensitivity. Smaller numbers yield fewer keywords at the risk of omitting some keywords; larger numbers admit more keywords and also more noise. [Hack #19] discusses this parameter and the kw_catcher program that uses it.

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