pdftextfmt

README

pdftextfmt

Format text copied from PDF files.

$ go build pdftextfmt.go
$ cat <<'EOF' | ./pdftextfmt
> This text has  uneven spacing,
> hyphen-
> ation, and trailing whitespace.  
> EOF
This text has uneven spacing, hyphenation, and trailing whitespace.

Mappings for Vim:

nnoremap Q Vip:!pdftextfmt<CR>gqq
vnoremap Q :!pdftextfmt<CR>gqq

In Bash I like the following:

# Filter clipboard: clean linebreaks in copied text
alias fclip='xclip -selection c -o | pdftextfmt | xclip -selection c'

Instructions for installing on Windows 10/11

1. Download pdftextfmt.vim and save it on your computer somewhere. Make sure the extension is .vim, not .vim.txt.

2. Install Neovim if you don't have it. Find the location of the nvim.exe (not nvim-qt.exe) and remember it. e.g. for me it's at "C:\Program Files\Neovim\bin\nvim.exe".

3. Make a file called pdftextfmt.cmd. In it should be exactly one line that looks like:

   "C:\Program Files\Neovim\bin\nvim.exe" -S C:\Users\Issa\pdftextfmt.vim
   

   The first part should be your nvim.exe path. The second part (after the -S) should be the path to your pdftextfmt.vim file from step (1). (You'll need to surround it in quotes if there are spaces in the path.)

4. In File Explorer, right click on pdftextfmt.cmd and select "Create shortcut".

5. Right click on the shortcut (not the .cmd file), and select "Properties".

6. In the Properties window, in the Shortcut tab, there should be a text box called "Target". Keep whatever text is there, but add the following to the beginning of the box: cmd.exe /C (there is a space after the C). So in the end, the box should say something like cmd.exe /C "C:\Users\Issa\Desktop\pdftextfmt.cmd".

7. Now you can drag the shortcut to the taskbar and it will be pinned. From now on, you can just click the pinned shortcut on the taskbar to filter the contents of your clipboard. So your workflow will look something like: copy text from PDF using Ctrl-c → click the pdftextfmt.cmd shortcut icon on the taskbar → paste into whatever application you wanted to paste to using Ctrl-v (you don't even need to do Ctrl-Shift-v).

8. (Optional) You can right click on the icon on the taskbar, then right click on "pdftextfmt.cmd - Shortcut", then click Properties. In the Shortcut tab, there should be a dropdown that says "Run". You can select "Minimized" and then click Apply/OK. This will prevent a black command prompt window from flashing on the screen every time you use the program (unfortunately, it also seems to lose focus of the current window, so you have to copy, use pdftextfmt, then select the spot to paste in, rather than doing the last two steps in either order, because if you click the spot to paste in first, then you will have to click it again before you paste).