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A bit of a tangent, but does anyone know of a good utility that can index a large number of PDF files so one can do fast keyword searches across all of them sim

A bit of a tangent, but does anyone know of a good utility that can index a large number of PDF files so one can do fast keyword searches across all of them simultaneously (free or paid)? It seems like this sort of utility used to be very common 15 years ago, but local search has kind of died on the vine.

kranner 4y ago
DEVONsphere Express, Recoll, also the latest major version of Calibre.
pletnes 4y ago
Macos’ spotlight can do this AFAIK.
- pulvinar 4y ago
  Yes, and Spotlight's also useable from the command line as mdfind, which has an -onlyin switch to restrict the search to a directory.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
crtxcr 4y ago
I am working on looqs, it can do that (and also will render the page immediatly): https://github.com/quitesimpleorg/looqs https://github.com/quitesimpleorg/looqs
llanowarelves 4y ago
dtSearch
summm 4y ago
Recoll?
- tombrossman 4y ago
  Yes, +1 for Recoll. It can also OCR those PDFs that are just an image of a page of text, and not 'live' text. Read the install notes and install the helper applications. When searching I'll first try the application or system's native search utility, but most of the time I end up opening Recoll to actually find the thing or snippet of text I want, and it has never failed me. https://www.lesbonscomptes.com/recoll/pages/features.html#doctypes https://www.lesbonscomptes.com/recoll/pages/features.html#do...
donio 4y ago
Recoll is a nice one, uses Xapian for the index. https://www.lesbonscomptes.com/recoll/ https://www.lesbonscomptes.com/recoll/
- nanna 4y ago
  Tried out recoll thanks to you posting this, and it's brilliant! Will be using pdfgrep a lot less from now on, though your help with pdfgrep-mode is great for when I do.
  - donio 4y ago
    Check out the script included in one of the comments of this PR. It allows displaying recoll query output in pdfgrep.el buffers. The fix in the PR itself helps to avoid an error in cases when recoll doesn't provide highlights in the snippets. https://github.com/jeremy-compostella/pdfgrep/pull/8 https://github.com/jeremy-compostella/pdfgrep/pull/8
sumnole 4y ago
While we're asking for tool tips: does anyone know of a tool that will cache/index web pages as the user browses, so that it can be searched/viewed offline later?

kranner 4y ago

DEVONsphere Express, Recoll, also the latest major version of Calibre.

pletnes 4y ago

Macos’ spotlight can do this AFAIK.

pulvinar 4y ago
Yes, and Spotlight's also useable from the command line as mdfind, which has an -onlyin switch to restrict the search to a directory.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

crtxcr 4y ago

I am working on looqs, it can do that (and also will render the page immediatly): https://github.com/quitesimpleorg/looqs https://github.com/quitesimpleorg/looqs

llanowarelves 4y ago

dtSearch

summm 4y ago

Recoll?

tombrossman 4y ago
Yes, +1 for Recoll. It can also OCR those PDFs that are just an image of a page of text, and not 'live' text. Read the install notes and install the helper applications. When searching I'll first try the application or system's native search utility, but most of the time I end up opening Recoll to actually find the thing or snippet of text I want, and it has never failed me. https://www.lesbonscomptes.com/recoll/pages/features.html#doctypes https://www.lesbonscomptes.com/recoll/pages/features.html#do...

donio 4y ago

Recoll is a nice one, uses Xapian for the index. https://www.lesbonscomptes.com/recoll/ https://www.lesbonscomptes.com/recoll/

nanna 4y ago
Tried out recoll thanks to you posting this, and it's brilliant! Will be using pdfgrep a lot less from now on, though your help with pdfgrep-mode is great for when I do.
- donio 4y ago
  Check out the script included in one of the comments of this PR. It allows displaying recoll query output in pdfgrep.el buffers. The fix in the PR itself helps to avoid an error in cases when recoll doesn't provide highlights in the snippets. https://github.com/jeremy-compostella/pdfgrep/pull/8 https://github.com/jeremy-compostella/pdfgrep/pull/8

sumnole 4y ago

While we're asking for tool tips: does anyone know of a tool that will cache/index web pages as the user browses, so that it can be searched/viewed offline later?