gmane.org.user-groups.linux.cplug.general

Re: Help building Linux WorkStation

Michael Carpenter — 2012-05-25T10:05:08

 Just a thought, but this might be a good topic for one of the CPLUG
meetups, including a demonstration on how to assemble...

On Thu, May 24, 2012 at 9:38 PM, Nate Moss <gurupilgrim-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w< at >public.gmane.org> wrote:

Re: Help building Linux WorkStation

Nate Moss — 2012-05-25T01:38:35

Steve,

There are several options for building the level machine you want to 
build and it depends on your specific needs as to what would be best and 
what you might already have that you can use.

You might also consider buying a new or refurbished computer and 
upgrading several components to meet the specs you are looking for. The 
advantage there is that they will often come with keyboard and mouse, as 
well as a windows license (which can cut that cost significantly)

I have some other recommendations as well, so feel free to contact me 
directly if you like. My email is gurupilgrim-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w< at >public.gmane.org or my cell 
number is 717-793-0301. I'll be more available to chat on Saturday.

Thanks,

Nate
Organizer - CPLUG

On 5/24/2012 9:22 PM, Steve Fosburg wrote:

Re: Help building Linux WorkStation

Dean Michael Dorman — 2012-05-25T01:35:27

Wait, heat sink fan $100?  Really?  Plus check TigerDirect.com for cheaper
and bigger monitors, just picked up 2 LED 24" monitors for less than $200
each
___________________________________
D e a n      .      M i c h a e l      .      D o r m a n
*
                                    570.486.6580
*
*
  DieStrafbarPhoto.com > DinosaurTechnologies
**
.com
*
**
*
            www.facebook.com/DieStrafbarPhoto<http://facebook.com/DieStrafbarPhoto>
*
___________________________________
*
*



On Thu, May 24, 2012 at 9:34 PM, Dean Michael Dorman <dmdorman-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w< at >public.gmane.org>wrote:

Re: Help building Linux WorkStation

Dean Michael Dorman — 2012-05-25T01:34:11

My 2 cents is to not stress over every detail.  Get a fast multi-core intel
cpu, and the best nVidia video card you can buy.  Obviously max out ram.
 Everything else is pretty inconsequential to what you want to do.  In
other words, get the biggest you can buy with Sata-3 hard drives or get an
SSD.


The computer isn't the hurdle, nor the software.  You should be able to
build the system for much less than $2000.

Dean


On Thu, May 24, 2012 at 9:22 PM, Steve Fosburg <sbfosburg-PkbjNfxxIARBDgjK7y7TUQ< at >public.gmane.org>wrote:

Re: Help building Linux WorkStation

Steve Fosburg — 2012-05-25T01:22:05

Nate,

Thank you for your response.  I have watched several videos and it dose 
not look that difficult to build a computer if you know what you are 
doing.  As for me, I don't know what I'm doing.

I have a budget of $2,000 and I'm probably 3 or $400 over.  A problem I 
have is; I don't know where to cut.   Intel or AMD--both are good 
products and I'm not sure which one gives the best bang for your buck.  
Following are my projections that I know need to be cut.

     Processor                   $300.00
     Heatsink Fan               $100.00
     Motherboard               $250.00
     Video Card                  $500.00
     Power Supply 750W    $150.00
     RAM 16gb                    $100.00
     R/W dvd disc _$  50.00_
                                     $1,450.00

2- 23" Flat screen           $300.00
2- Hard drives                $180.00
     Keyboard & mouse _$ 80.00_
                                        $560.00

     Tower case _$150.00_
         Total                     $2,160.00

I would also

Re: Slightly OT: which software to use to enable text searching of existing pdf files?

Ron Meinsler — 2012-05-25T00:02:05

Personally, I like all the online conversion tools that are out there.
example: http://www.pdfonline.com/convert-pdf-to-html/http://www.pdftoword.com/http://www.convertpdftohtml.net/
-----Original Message-----
From: "John Core" <core.john< at >gmail.com>
Sent 5/24/2012 1:11:50 PM
To: cplug< at >cplug.net
Subject: Re: [CPLUG] Slightly OT: which software to use to enable text
searching of existing pdf files?
I have a BK 1590A. And trust me, the scanned the original manual so you won't be able to
search it unless you run it through OCR.
Google can do this for you
Create a folder in your website (say abc.com/pdf) and upload all the PDF images to that folder.
Now create a public web page that links to all the PDF files. Wait for the Google bots to spider your stuff.
Once done, type the query "site:abc.com/pdf filetype:pdf" to see the PDF documents as HTML.
--------OR------------
Download one of the many Winders (yuch) programs that have a 30 day trial
--------OR------------
All you need to do is use Ghostscript to extract

Re: Slightly OT: which software to use to enable text searching of existing pdf files?

John Core — 2012-05-24T17:11:50

I have a BK 1590A. And trust me, the scanned the original manual so you
won't be able to
search it unless you run it through OCR.

Google can do this for you
Create a folder in your website (say abc.com/pdf) and upload all the PDF
images to that folder.
Now create a public web page that links to all the PDF files. Wait for the
Google bots to spider your stuff.
Once done, type the query "site:abc.com/pdf filetype:pdf" to see the PDF
documents as HTML.

--------OR------------

Download one of the many Winders (yuch) programs that have a 30 day trial

--------OR------------

All you need to do is use Ghostscript to extract the pages of the scanned
PDF into one large TIFF file, and then run Tesseract (from code.google.com)to
OCR those pages into a (hopefully) coherent text file

   First install ghostscript and tesseract if you don't already have them.

sudo apt-get install ghostscript tesseract-ocr tesseract-ocr-eng

Then for each scanned PDF you want to convert to text, run the following:

gs -dNOPAUSE -sDEVIC

Re: Slightly OT: which software to use to enable text searching of existing pdf files?

Roy J. Tellason, Sr. — 2012-05-24T14:28:39

I heard about this program a while back,  haven't yet gotten to playing with it,  but it looks like it offers some capabilities:

http://multivalent.sourceforge.net/

Monthly Meeting June 12th

CPLUG — 2012-05-24T10:51:02

Cpluggers,

Tuesday evening June 12th, Seth Jerome will be speaking on user-friendly 
distros, and combining the talk with some everyday CLI (Command Line 
Interface).

[my spiel]::
Not familiar with Linux yet? Ever wish you could just jump into Linux 
and use it? This is the perfect chance to do just that. Seth Jerome is a 
long time Linux user, involved in CPLUG for close to 15 years. He will 
be showing you several options for 'distributions' of Linux that are 
easy to get started with.

This is also the perfect time to ask questions and get answers about Linux!

Pizza will be ordered at the start of the meeting for $1.50 per slice.


Hope to see you there!

Nate
Organizer - CPLUG

Re: Help building Linux WorkStation

CPLUG — 2012-05-24T10:31:50

I'm not exactly close (York), but I would be glad to point you in a 
direction and help you out. Graphics and post production are also a 
strong interest and hobby for me. Ubuntu is perfect for this because 
it's extremely easy to use and work with.

I don't personally know much about 3D CAD or Geographic Information 
Systems, but you will want to look into Blender, Inkscape and Gimp: (3D 
modeling rendering and post production; vector; and graphics, 
respectively). What makes Ubuntu nice is that all three of those are 
available to install at the click of a button.

My day job is helpdesk, and I'm in charge of building the computers for 
my work, so if you have any questions about hardware, I'd be glad to 
answer them as well.

Nate
Organizer - CPLUG
gurupilgrim-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w< at >public.gmane.org

On 5/23/2012 7:15 PM, Steve Fosburg wrote:

Re: Slightly OT: which software to use to enable text searching of existing pdf files?

Chris Moates — 2012-05-24T00:04:05

When you say "Supported by the document" what you mean is that the PDF 
is a text file with layout information, and maybe some illustrations or 
what have you. What you have is a bunch of JPG scans of pages of a 
manual, glued together into a multi-page JPG, essentially, by the PDF 
standard. I have this same issue in my hobbyist field, pinball machines, 
where old manuals are scanned in and bound as PDF.

So yes, you're going to require OCR software. I did a quick Google 
search and came up with this:

http://blog.konradvoelkel.de/2010/01/linux-ocr-and-pdf-problem-solved/

It sounds like what you're looking for.

Cheers,
Chris

On 5/23/2012 7:22 PM, keitho-aiW8oOy0A7DIrURfT66hzQ< at >public.gmane.org wrote:

Re: Slightly OT: which software to use to enable text searching of existing pdf files?

2012-05-23T23:22:43

Thanks for all your replies guys.

I typically use XPDf. Like pdftotext, pdfgrep, and Evince, AFAIK they all
depend on text-searching being already "supported by the document". Also,
they are useless if you don't have the owner password for those pdf files
which have been protected in some way.

I was hoping there would be a way to take an existing pdf file from an
unknown origin and with various unknown protections and somehow re-scan it
with OCR type software to create a text-searchable pdf file (not a text
file).

I guess that just isn't possible at this time with the way the pdf format
has evolved. Like I said, I don't know the technology.

Keith

Help building Linux WorkStation

Steve Fosburg — 2012-05-23T23:15:08

Is there a 'cplug' member who would advise and build a linux workstation 
for me?

My interest are; 3D CAD, 3D animation and rendering, Geographic 
Information Systems and audio/video production.

I'm retired and graphics are a strong interest/hobby.  I live in the 
Carlisle area and would like to find someone reasonably close to work on 
this project.  I would buy the computer components and pay for the 
computer assembly.

Thank you,
Steve Fosburg
sbfosburg-PkbjNfxxIARBDgjK7y7TUQ< at >public.gmane.org

Re: Slightly OT: which software to use to enable text searching of existing pdf files?

Matthew Gillespie — 2012-05-23T13:41:51

I actually just switched from XPDF to Evince (which I like much better). My understanding on XPDF if that it's become an "unmaintainable mess" [0], and it's been pulled from the Gentoo Portage Tree for that reason.

Matthew Gillespie

[0]http://dilfridge.blogspot.com/2012/02/what-about-my-precious-xpdf.html

On 05/22/12 20:44, Bret Fledderjohn wrote:

Re: Slightly OT: which software to use to enable text searching of existing pdf files?

Bret Fledderjohn — 2012-05-23T00:44:41

http://www.foolabs.com/xpdf/about.html. Xpdf seems to work well too.

On Tuesday, May 22, 2012, Logan Kennedy wrote:

Re: Slightly OT: which software to use to enable text searching of existing pdf files?

Logan Kennedy — 2012-05-23T00:22:59

Pdf2text might be useful
On May 22, 2012 7:56 PM, "Bob Igo" <bob-VHaslujj8MM< at >public.gmane.org> wrote:

Re: Slightly OT: which software to use to enable text searching of existing pdf files?

Bob Igo — 2012-05-22T23:55:41

Christian already replied with some useful info, but I had a small bit
to add.

On 05/22/2012 07:20 PM, keitho-aiW8oOy0A7DIrURfT66hzQ< at >public.gmane.org wrote:
As I vaguely recall, PDF text is basically a vector drawing of
characters, which is why/how you can zoom in to an arbitrary level and
still see no pixellation.  Searchable PDF text requires a text index, as
Christian alluded.  You won't get that from a PDF that is basically a
JPG with a PDF wrapper (from a scanner) unless the process did some OCR,
also as Christian alluded.

Gtg :)

Re: Slightly OT: which software to use to enable text searching of existing pdf files?

Christian Pearce — 2012-05-22T23:37:55

* Alfresco -- heavy weight

Are the PDFs scans orbuilt from text.  That makes a big difference in how
you can do the searching.  If they are not built from text, you need to
pass it through some sort of OCR scanner to get the words.  That just made
it a whole lot more complicated. At that point I would consider trying to
publish it and have google index it.  Then search your site with google.
 If the material isn't copyrighted.

On Tue, May 22, 2012 at 7:20 PM, <keitho-aiW8oOy0A7DIrURfT66hzQ< at >public.gmane.org> wrote:

Slightly OT: which software to use to enable text searching of existing pdf files?

2012-05-22T23:20:19

As a hobby, I have been working on old analog Tektronix scopes. It's
generally easy to download (free) the service manuals in pdf format. They
are often over 400 pages.

Unfortunately, the good people who have made these free pdf files
available for whatever reason have almost never made them text searchable.
Actually, often even the manuals you buy aren't text searchable.

Is there a Linux-based utility or software which can take an existing pdf
file and generate a new version which is text searchable? Regardless of
whatever security or restrictions the original producer built into the pdf
file?

I don't know anything about pdf file systems or structure, so maybe this
is a dumb question. But if it were possible using Linux I'd sure like to
know how. Also, I really do not want to have to use Adobe software for
anything, if at all possible...

Thanks,
Keith Ostertag

Re: minicom, usb

Roy J. Tellason, Sr. — 2012-05-22T13:29:44

The other devices are a keyboard,  mouse,  occasionally an external drive,  or a camera.  It *is* showing up there now,  so if I can count on it continuing to do so then cool,  I'm all set with what I need to do here...

Re: minicom, usb

Roy J. Tellason, Sr. — 2012-05-22T13:27:37

Okay,  I plugged it in just now and got the following showing up in /var/log/messages:

May 22 09:17:34 kernel: usb 2-1.4.2: new full speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 9
May 22 09:17:34 kernel: usb 2-1.4.2: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
May 22 09:17:34 kernel: ftdi_sio 2-1.4.2:1.0: FTDI USB Serial Device converter detected
May 22 09:17:34 kernel: drivers/usb/serial/ftdi_sio.c: Detected FT232RL
May 22 09:17:34 kernel: usb 2-1.4.2: FTDI USB Serial Device converter now attached to ttyUSB0

I tried putting /dev/ttyUSB0 in minicom just now,  and firing it up without the -s it seems to come up okay.

This should get interesting,  when I get that console cable plugged in to the serial adapter...    :-)