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Tip & Tricks

Removing copy protection from a PDF file

  1. Install GhostScript and its GUI GhostView
  2. Open the PDF file in GhostView
  3. File > Convert, and saved as eg. DUMMY.PDF

The contents of DUMMY.PDF can now be copy/pasted :-) Alternatively, use xpdf and a patch

Uploading files through FTP with ncftpput

http://www.ncftp.com/ncftp/doc/faq.html

http://www.ncftp.com/ncftp/doc/ncftpput.html

"C:\Program Files\NcFTP\ncftpput.exe" -R -u mylogin -p mypass ftp.acme.com /source/c *.c

Uploading files through FTP with cURL

http://curl.haxx.se/docs/manpage.html

http://curl.haxx.se/docs/faq.html

http://curl.haxx.se/docs/manual.html

Uploading files through FTP with wput

for %%f in (c:\sourc\*.c) do wput -vN %%f ftp://mylog:mypass@ftp.acme.com/source/c/

Errors:

ImageMagick

Here's how to resize a bunch of pictures under Windows using ImageMagick:

for %%f in (*.jpg *.jpeg *.gif *.png) do "C:\Program Files\ImageMagick-6.3.0-Q16\imconvert.exe %%f -resize 50%% +profile "*" test\%%f"

"The system cannot find the path specified."?

Opera 9.w

To disable the dragging of objects (eg. pictures, links), something I find very annoying, edit opera6.ini in your profile, go to section [User Prefs], and set Enable Drag=0. 

http://www.opera.com/support/usingopera/operaini/

That done, here are things to change through the Tools menu if you want 9.x to behave like previous versions of Opera:

Appearance

Preferences

Note: Here are the settings in Opera 8.54:

Total Commander

To compare two directories including their sub-directories (useful to only upload files that changed to an FTP server): Commands > Synchronize Dirs

UltraEdit

Regex

  1. Advanced Configuration | Find : Unix Style Regular Expressions
  2. In the Search/Replace dialog : check Regular Expressions
  3. Find ^(.+)$ and replace with <td>\1</td>

Some notes about the regex function in UE:

Here's an example, where I was cleaning up an RTF file that was the exported version of an HLP file. The original part in the RTF was eg.

{\b\cf12 Edit Menu   \{button Top,JI("","INTRODUCTION")\}
\par }

... and here's the regex to find:

{\\b[^{]+{button Top,JI\("","[^"]+"\)\\}\r\n\\par }

(Free) Agent

Since I can never figure out how to set settings in the Group | Default Properties:

Mark read

What to purge

When to purge

Here's how to enable reading Japanese (Agent 1.93 at least doesn't seem to support typing Japanese, even with the IME installed):

  1. (W2K/XP) Through Control Panel, install the IME, ie. support for Japanese
  2. From the \All_COD sub-directory, copy the Japanese code page cp932.cod into Agent's main directory above, and start Agent
  3. Options > General Preferences > Languages, and click on Add...
  4. Give this new language a name, eg. "Japanese", Based on = Japanese, and hit OK. Leave the default as is, and hit OK
  5. Options > Display Preferences > Fonts : In "Fonts for the Language", select "Japanese". Next, click on "Variable-Pitch Body" and "Fixed-Pitch Body", and make sure each Script is set to "Japanese" instead of "Western", or you won't see any Japanese... Hit OK
  6. In the left pane, select the Japaneses newsgroup, eg. sci.lang.japan
  7. Group > Properties > Language = Japanese
  8. You should now be able to read Japanese posted in Nihon- or Nihongo-related newsgroups

Eudora

Here's how to get rid of the X-Sender header. More infos about this header in "What is 'X-Sender' in the message header?".

HTML Tidy

Here's how to clean a Word document saved from DOC to HTML:

tidy -m -i -u --word-2000 y myfile.html

-m  update original file

-i    indent element content

-u    force tags to upper case

Firefox

Favorite extensions:

Word 97

Here's how to print the same label on label sheets made for laser printers:

  1. Create a new document, type the text and format it as you wish (fonts, etc.)
  2. Select the text, and hit Tools > Envelopes & Labels
  3. Click on the Labels tab
  4. If the type of the label sheets isn't listed, create a new type of label by clicking on New Label
  5. Word doesn't always follow the settings that you put when creating a new label. If the margins aren't right, change them in the E&L section (Those in File > Page Setup are ignored)

Here's how to fetch data from a tab-delimited file and print labels. It's a good idea for the first row to be the header for each column (eg. Company, Address, etc.):

  1. Create a new, blank document
  2. Tools > Mail Merge: Create > Mailing Labels > Active Window
  3. Get Data > Open Data Source, point to the .TSV file
  4. Select a label type: Since Word isn't reliable, you might need to print a few test sheets before Word prints out the labels just like you need. Do this on regular sheets of paper instead of label sheets
  5. Insert Merge Field: Select the fields
  6. Merge > Merge