Online article tools

Links to helpful online tools for assisting with putting together articles and content for libcom.org.

Submitted by Steven. on November 8, 2012
  • Online OCR: Enables you to OCR documents (turn PDF files into text).
  • LibreOffice Draw: Enables you to edit PDF files.
  • Line Break Remover: A tool for getting rid of excess of line breaks in your text.
  • HTML table generator: This handy page generates the HTML code for tables, so you don't have to.
  • Rotate PDF: Enables you to rotate PDF documents and save them in the same format.
  • Merge PDF: Enables you to merge multiple PDF documents into one.
  • Split PDF: Enables you to split PDF documents into multiple, smaller ones.
  • Compress PDF: Enables you to compress large PDF files into high-quality, much smaller file sizes so they can be uploaded.
  • 2epub: Enables you to turn text, doc and other files into e-book formats like mobi and epub.
  • Cute PDF editor: Advanced PDF editor allowing you to do many of the things in the above websites, with additional features like inserting additional pages, cropping and resizing pages.
  • Online HTML Editor: Enables you to simultaneously edit text and HTML. For example, if you see an article that you like, and want to post it on libcom, you can right-click on the webpage of the article and select view page source, copy the sections of the code that contain the article+its references, and paste it in the right-hand box of the HTML editor. Then edit it in the left-hand box, and as you edit it the HTML in the right-hand box will change. After you've finished editing it, copy the HTML code in the right-hand box and paste it in the libcom article 'Body' box. Underneath the 'Body' box, change the Input format to HTML no line breaks.

If there are any other tools which could help libcom contributors please post them below and we can incorporate them into this list!

Comments

Steven.

11 years 12 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Steven. on November 8, 2012

Wojtek, thought you might like the merge PDF one! If you fancied merging some of the PDFs of your library submissions that would be really cool, if you had time…

Steven.

11 years 11 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Steven. on November 12, 2012

On a related note, does anyone know a good online OCR tool? That would be something we could add in here

connorgurney

11 years 4 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by connorgurney on June 15, 2013

The "more like this" is showing as Array. :(

Steven.

7 years 11 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Steven. on November 15, 2016

Reminder to myself to add these: http://www.howtogeek.com/166610/who-needs-a-scanner-scan-a-document-to-pdf-with-your-android-phone/ and https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.intsig.camscanner&hl=en_GB

syndicalist

6 years 1 month ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by syndicalist on October 3, 2018

Cool. Not seen this before

jef costello

6 years ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by jef costello on October 4, 2018

The LibeOffice suite is pretty good and all of its programs can export files as pdfs.

We might need some epub tools now, I use calibre, but that's just for reading books on a kindle or a phone.

edit:

cutepdf I get an out of date Java warning, not sure if it still works.

FWOformatter and 2epub don't seem to be working any more either.

E7Blackbird

7 months ago

Submitted by E7Blackbird on March 30, 2024

Google Docs does OCR now. (I know... flipping Google, but it works.)

Speechmatics is commercial software with a pretty decent free plan. AI-assisted speech-to-text, translation, subtitling etc. Good for making transcripts of audio interviews, though they still need proofing.

https://www.speechmatics.com

adri

7 months ago

Submitted by adri on March 30, 2024

It's worth mentioning again that you can do basically anything to pdfs with Adobe Acrobat (Adobe are the creators of the pdf format). Just have to get your hands on a copy of the software

adri

7 months ago

Submitted by adri on March 30, 2024

- Gimp is also a handy (open-source) image-manipulation tool for modifying article images (resizing etc.)
- For general OCR you can also use the (open-source) program gImageReader; besides OCRing PDFs, it also allows you to open a screenshot or image of text and then extract the text from it (here's a video)

Fozzie

7 months ago

Submitted by Fozzie on March 31, 2024

"FWO Formatter: A tool for getting rid of excess of line breaks in your text."

Link appears to be down.

Submitted by Steven. on April 11, 2024

Fozzie wrote: "FWO Formatter: A tool for getting rid of excess of line breaks in your text."

Link appears to be down.

Thanks, have fixed that and added your OCR tool

Fozzie

5 months 2 weeks ago

Submitted by Fozzie on May 20, 2024

If anyone would like to save PDFs from archive.org that are only set up to be borrowed, there is a tool for that now:

https://github.com/elementdavv/internet_archive_downloader?tab=readme-ov-file

adri

5 months 2 weeks ago

Submitted by adri on May 20, 2024

Nice one. I've always just used a cache-reading program. You can basically borrow whatever book on the IA and then flip through all the pages. As you flip through it, your browser stores cached images of each page, which you can then use a cache-reading program to save. You can also just view/save the files directly from the cache-folder of your browser, without using any other program. Then all you have to do is combine the individual page-images into a pdf file. But yeah, I'm sure there are some automated tools out there that are much easier to use!