vdavez

Converting a Word Document to Markdown in Two Moves

The Problem

A lot of important government documents are created and saved in Microsoft Word (*.docx). But Microsoft Word is a proprietary format, and it's not really useful for presenting documents on the web. So, I wanted to find a way to convert a .docx file into markdown.

The Solution

As it turns out, there are several open-source tools that allow for conversion between file types. Pandoc is one of them, and it's powerful. In fact, pandoc's website says "If you need to convert files from one markup format into another, pandoc is your swiss-army knife." But, although pandoc can convert from markdown into .docx, it doesn't work in the other direction.

willurd

Each of these commands will run an ad hoc http static server in your current (or specified) directory, available at http://localhost:8000. Use this power wisely.

Discussion on reddit.

Python 2.x

$ python -m SimpleHTTPServer 8000

BlakeGardner

# Last updated May, 2024 for Apple silicon Macs
# Install Homebrew if you don't already have it: https://brew.sh

# install nano from homebrew
brew install nano nanorc

# update your nanorc file
echo 'include "'"$(brew --cellar nano)"'/*/share/nano/*.nanorc"' >> ~/.nanorc

# close and re-open your terminal and you'll have syntax highlighting

ttscoff

#!/usr/bin/env ruby

require 'open-uri'
require 'net/http'
require 'iconv'
require 'optparse'
require 'fileutils'
require 'cgi'

$options = {}

kinopyo

Check whether a Paperclip attachment exists

Don’t simply test for the presence of the magic Paperclip attribute, it will return a paperclip Attachment object and thus always be true:

- if user.photo.present? # always true
  = image_tag(user.photo.url)

gfontenot

def get_movie_duration video_file
	
  # Run ffmpeg on the video, and do it silently
  ffmpeg_output = `/usr/local/bin/ffmpeg -i "#{video_file}" 2>&1`
	
  # Find the duration in the output, and force a return if it's found
  /duration: ([0-9]{2}:[0-9]{2}:[0-9]{2}.[0-9]{2})/i.match(ffmpeg_output) { |m| return m[1] }

  # If it didn't get a match, something is wrong. Log the error
  return "FFMPEG ERROR"