Work with pdf files

qpdf can be apt installed in wsl and then used from gitbash using wsl qpdf ....

Merge multiple pdf files

qpdf --empty --pages file1.pdf file2.pdf -- merged.pdf

Change orientation of individual documents in the merged document

qpdf --empty \
  --pages file1.pdf --rotate=180:2 file2.pdf -- \
  merged.pdf

Zotero

Get bibtex file from word to import in zotero\

ONline tool Reference Extractor
Upload word file and download the bibtex to be used in zotero

Export-import collection from Zotero including all files

Search in pdf files

pdfgrep is a command line tool to search in pdfs
link to the github repo

Usecases

  • Find on which lines there is a specific word

Find a line number of a given word

pdfgrep -ni 'cardiomyocyte' paper.pdf

Notes:

  • -n flag gives you the number of the line
  • -i makes it case insensitive

Features

vld@pop-os:~/Documents/GitHub/Books$ pdfgrep --help
Usage: pdfgrep [OPTION]... PATTERN FILE...

Search for PATTERN in each FILE.
PATTERN is, by default, an extended regular expression.

Commonly used options:
 -i, --ignore-case              Ignore case distinctions
 -P, --pcre                     Use Perl compatible regular expressions (PCRE)
 -H, --with-filename            Print the file name for each match
 -h, --no-filename              Suppress the prefixing of file name on output
 -n, --page-number              Print page number with output lines
 -c, --count                    Print only a count of matches per file
     --color WHEN               Use colors for highlighting;
                                WHEN can be `always', `never' or `auto'
 -p, --page-count               Print only a count of matches per page
 -m, --max-count NUM            Stop reading after NUM matching lines (per file)
 -q, --quiet                    Suppress normal output
 -r, --recursive                Search directories recursively
 -R, --dereference-recursive    Likewise, but follow all symlinks
     --cache                    Use cache for faster operation
     --help                     Print this help
 -V, --version                  Show version information

The above list is only a selection of commonly used options. Please refer
to the man page for a complete list.

Installation

On Ubuntu, Pop!_OS (and other Debian based distros)

sudo apt install pdfgrep