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Had a library of about 800 articles that I read on a laptop with a large format external monitor. Related question: doing the above had some pain points so I w

by crieff 10y ago

Had a library of about 800 articles that I read on a laptop with a large format external monitor. Related question: doing the above had some pain points so I wrote an app to give me the ability to give files and directories human readable names. Read, annotate, and bookmark the pdf within the app. Then be able to search across the whole library on annotations and keywords which would open the pdf to the page and paragraph the annotation referenced. The big thing it does is answer the question: I have read something that I need right now, but where in this huge pile of paper (or directory) is it? I have gotten the app to the MVP stage, is there any other functionality that would be useful, and would anyone else find this useful?

cr0sh 10y ago
I would find such a thing useful, if it worked on Linux. I don't even know how many academic papers (and datasheets, and other PDFs) I have - but it's a ton, and increasing all the time. Ideally, it would be nice if the app could do a search across a drive (or NAS, or whatever) for PDFs, pull out a summary and title, and then use that for naming/search/etc. Maybe your app already does this? To be honest - what I wish I had was a personal Google Search appliance spidering all of my data on my NAS, which was also linked to normal Google, with priority of search results given to local information. Maybe something like that already exists - I've found open-source solutions that come close, but all for the search/spidering typically required a machine waaaay better than my desktop...
- crieff 10y ago
  There are some applications that will do a full text search of pdfs across directories, but seem geared towards server rather than desktop, with commensurate levels of cost and complexity. Conceptually you could use image magik and lucene to make a Linux solution, but without any added features such as summary or title. I am experimenting with a lightweight solution, but am working out which compromises are reasonable to take so that it is worthwhile but not overwhelming of the machine it runs on. Still have to give it a real test with a large number of files as well.
  - cr0sh 10y ago
    After I posted, I did some searching, and it appears like something could be made using SOLR or Elasticsearch. Both seem to have methods/plugins for filesystem indexing and document importing/analysis, as well as easy interfaces to allow for any language to be used for development. Combining all of that, plus some dev work and such a search appliance looks doable for a home system, using only a single node. For the hardware, I figure I could potentially use some old stuff I have (thinking like a Core2 Quad with 16gb RAM and a large hard drive would be fine). I could probably stuff it into an old half-depth 1u server case. The problem now is finding the time to build it...
    - crieff 10y ago
      Thanks, I had missed SOLR and TIKA even though I had investigated Lucene. One criterion I had for a lightweight solution was to not require Java. No problem with Java, just that it is a big dependency and my perception is that it is not a common install on the laptop or desktop of people reading pdfs, at least out side of the STEM stream.
milesrout 10y ago
>an app to give me the ability to give files and directories human readable names. You wrote mv?

by crieff 10y ago

cr0sh 10y ago

I would find such a thing useful, if it worked on Linux. I don't even know how many academic papers (and datasheets, and other PDFs) I have - but it's a ton, and increasing all the time. Ideally, it would be nice if the app could do a search across a drive (or NAS, or whatever) for PDFs, pull out a summary and title, and then use that for naming/search/etc. Maybe your app already does this? To be honest - what I wish I had was a personal Google Search appliance spidering all of my data on my NAS, which was also linked to normal Google, with priority of search results given to local information. Maybe something like that already exists - I've found open-source solutions that come close, but all for the search/spidering typically required a machine waaaay better than my desktop...

crieff 10y ago
There are some applications that will do a full text search of pdfs across directories, but seem geared towards server rather than desktop, with commensurate levels of cost and complexity. Conceptually you could use image magik and lucene to make a Linux solution, but without any added features such as summary or title. I am experimenting with a lightweight solution, but am working out which compromises are reasonable to take so that it is worthwhile but not overwhelming of the machine it runs on. Still have to give it a real test with a large number of files as well.
- cr0sh 10y ago
  After I posted, I did some searching, and it appears like something could be made using SOLR or Elasticsearch. Both seem to have methods/plugins for filesystem indexing and document importing/analysis, as well as easy interfaces to allow for any language to be used for development. Combining all of that, plus some dev work and such a search appliance looks doable for a home system, using only a single node. For the hardware, I figure I could potentially use some old stuff I have (thinking like a Core2 Quad with 16gb RAM and a large hard drive would be fine). I could probably stuff it into an old half-depth 1u server case. The problem now is finding the time to build it...
  - crieff 10y ago
    Thanks, I had missed SOLR and TIKA even though I had investigated Lucene. One criterion I had for a lightweight solution was to not require Java. No problem with Java, just that it is a big dependency and my perception is that it is not a common install on the laptop or desktop of people reading pdfs, at least out side of the STEM stream.

milesrout 10y ago

>an app to give me the ability to give files and directories human readable names. You wrote mv?