Free plain text software for linux

PlainDoc (pd2tex) document production system allows you to write documents as normal text files. pd2tex tool converts the plain text files to:
- TeX which then gets converted to pdf (you need pdflatex tool installed)
- DocBook (dbx) which can be fed to various tool chains (not supplied) to generate pdf and html
- flat HTML (entire document in one HTML file)
- multipage HTML (each section as its own HTML file)
PlainDoc system was developed by Sampo Kellomaki from around 2002 onwards with the aim of solving document editing problems for writing:
- IT specifications documents
- software product manuals and documentation
- scientific and research papers
- legal documents
- presentation slides
Some of the goals were:
- document source is the plain text representation, no separate conversion needed
- documents are intuitive to write and understand
- getting a neophyte to a reasonable level of productivity and achievement should be easy. A college freshman should be able to use PlainDoc after 1 hour training, provided that all the tool chains have already been installed
- it must be very difficult to fatally corrupt a document; fixing corruption should be as simple as editing the file
- it must be possible to do diffs between versions of the document
- using cvs should be well supported (helps to avoid fatal loss of document, too)
- enable use of plain text productivity environments like emacs(1)
- the PlainDoc system MUST be serious enough to produce most any type of document and thus end the need to use any other system
- typeset quality output in paper and web formats
PlainDoc has now (Oct, 2004) been around for more than two years and it has been successfully used to produce:
- major IT specifications conforming to formatting rules (70 page range)
- research papers and theses conforming to formatting rules (200 page range)
- product manuals (500 page range)
- legal documents and contracts conforming to formatting rules
PlainDoc acknowledges its LaTeX legacy and does not aim at WYSIWYG (except in plain text document production, of course :-) however we are not totally against visual formatting either. Thus many hooks for accessing the underlying document formatters capabilities have been made available, such as:
- direct entry of TeX code
- direct entry of DocBook code
- direct entry of HTML code
These should allow you to get your job done without the system philosophy standing too much in the way, while for most part leveraging the automatic formatting of standard constructs.

Posy::Plugin::TextToHTML is a Posy plugin to convert plain text files to HTML.

SYNOPSIS

@plugins = qw(Posy::Core
...
Posy::Plugin::TextToHTML
...);

This uses the HTML::TextToHTML module (as used by the txt2html script) to convert the body of an entry from text into HTML. This checks the extension of the entry file, and if it is txt, then it will convert the entry.

This basically replaces the parse_entry method, and calls the parent method for anything other than text.

Collink is a link extractor/collector based on Qt library. It saves list of links as plain text or better as a Downloader for X list giving different names for files to save.
You can filter links by filename extension and via a Qt regular expression. It is probably an unuseful utility if you do not manage your downloads with D4X, use it as a power user or if you know wget ;)
Enhancements:
- save / restore last filter
- 0.5 release

mod_auth_plain implements authentication routines using plain text files for Apaches authentication protocol.

An example .htaccess file:

Deny from all
AuthType basic
AuthName "Plain htpasswd"
AuthPlainUserFile .htpasswd
Require valid-user
Satisfy any

An example .htpasswd file:

user:password

Note that AuthPlainUserFile can be relative to the directory which contains .htaccess file.

Apache::Pod::Text is a mod_perl handler to convert Pod to plain text.

SYNOPSIS

A simple mod_perl handler to easily convert Pod to Text.

CONFIGURATION

See Apache::Pod::HTML for configuration details.

HTML::TextToHTML is a Perl module that can convert plain text file to HTML.

SYNOPSIS

From the command line:

txt2html I< arguments >

From Scripts:

use HTML::TextToHTML;

# create a new object
my $conv = new HTML::TextToHTML();

# convert a file
$conv->txt2html(infile=>[$text_file],
outfile=>$html_file,
title=>"Wonderful Things",
mail=>1,
]);

# reset arguments
$conv->args(infile=>[], mail=>0);

# convert a string
$newstring = $conv->process_chunk($mystring)

HTML::TextToHTML converts plain text files to HTML. The txt2html script uses this module to do the same from the command-line.

It supports headings, tables, lists, simple character markup, and hyperlinking, and is highly customizable. It recognizes some of the apparent structure of the source document (mostly whitespace and typographic layout), and attempts to mark that structure explicitly using HTML. The purpose for this tool is to provide an easier way of converting existing text documents to HTML format, giving something nicer than just whapping the text into a big PRE block.

Agata Report is a cross-platform database reporting tool with graph generation and a query tool that allows you to get data from PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQLite, Oracle, DB2, MS-SQL, Informix, InterBase, Sybase, or Frontbase and export that data as PostScript, plain text, HTML, XML, PDF, or spreadsheet (CSV) formats through its graphical interface.

You can also define subtotals, levels and a grand total for the report, merge the data into a document, generate address labels, or even generate a complete ER-diagram from your database.