Plucker desktop questions

[macsek]

Hi,

I just have found this great program. Congratulations to the authors! :

Some questions, though:

• PDF files: I have read PDF files are handled. Plucker desktop (1.6.2.0) says the opposite
• national characters: http://www.2000ad.uz.ua/tartalom.html is partly not received, I guess because of some national characters. Is there any way to have it retrieved?
• scheduled update but not when HotSyncing. Is it possible?

TIA:
macsek

PS: Happy Birthday, hacker

[hacker]

Plucker Desktop is a bit old, and relies upon a version of wxWindows with a nasty progress callback bug. The bug requires that you wiggle your mouse around the progress window for it to continue fetching. Its a pain in the butt. It also ships with version 1.6 of the viewer, and we're up to 1.8 in public releases.

But that being said, Plucker used to support conversion of PDF documents through a web-based service, but now no longer does. It may re-appear again in a future release if Plucker makes another version, but Plucker Desktop does not support this feature natively.

You might find these suggestions in this thread useful. One in bash, one in Python. I use Perl myself to convert PDF (and Word, PostScript, etc.) documents to Plucker format.

For the national characters, you should probably avoid Plucker Desktop for that, since it is very old and may not contain the internationalization support that has been in the current parser for a year and a half. Use the Python code directly (Spider.py is what you want on Windows, or plucker-build on Linux, which is just a symlink to Spider.py anyway).

Many of the texts I convert have non-ascii characters and they convert very well with Plucker's Python and C++ distillers.

I'm not sure what you meant about your scheduled update question though. Can you explain further?

[macsek]

Thanks for your help and ideas, hacker.

I am in a hurry now but later I will answer your question.

[macsek]

About the scheduled update:

I set Plucker to update the due channels. (and two of them to be updated in every hour)
When I connect my Palm and initiate a hotsync, Plucker refreshes the channels from the net! I can avoid it switching off Plucker's autoupdate.

[hacker]

Originally Posted by macsek

About the scheduled update:

I set Plucker to update the due channels. (and two of them to be updated in every hour)
When I connect my Palm and initiate a hotsync, Plucker refreshes the channels from the net! I can avoid it switching off Plucker's autoupdate.

I think you meant to say Plucker Desktop in the spaces where bolded above. Plucker has no scheduling built into it, unless you add it yourself via cron or some other method. Plucker Desktop however does, but it isn't "Plucker", its just a graphical tool that calls the Plucker python distiller under the hood.

That being said, I still don't understand the issue here. Are you saying that you do NOT want your Plucker documents updated every time you sync? If that is the case, just disable that in the preferences of Plucker Desktop. I've never used Plucker Desktop, but I'm sure there's a preference there for the default scheduling. Check the .ini file (if on Windows) or the ~/.pluckerrc file if on non-Windows.

[macsek]

Yes, you are right, this is Plucker Desktop

Yes, I do not want my Plucker documents to be updated every time I sync.
And I can disable it so no problem, I might misunderstood the update settings. I thought Plucker Desktop will update the channels by the specified intervals and the most recent version will be synched to the Palm.
But Plucker Desktop might only update when hotsynching.

Anyway, thanks for your help, I think I will switch to Python or Perl