I want to build a simple script that may be useful for others as well, but I have only very basic programming knowledge and can't do it myself without learning how to write powershell scripts from scratch.
What this script is supposed to do is, open an INI file (really just a txt), look for a variable with an assigned value and replace that value from a txt hosted on GitHub, save and then run a program.
This is for the tracker list of qBittorrent, since that feature still hasn't been implemented and the only other script that I could find that does this is for linux and mac, there seem to be none for windows.
The basic idea is this:
get-content "c:\users\[user]\appdata\roaming\qbittorrent\qbittorrent.ini"
# This is where pseudo code starts
get file from "[github-link.txt]"
save file to cache # keeping it is useless as it gets updated daily
find variable "Session\AdditionalTrackers=" in qbittorrent.ini
replace value of variable with content of cached file # this is what I struggle with most when looking for example code. Everything I could find specified the exact string that needed replacing, which in this case is quite long and may change with every update of the file.
overwrite original file
launch program qbittorrent.exe
end script
Conveniently or most likely deliberately all (most) of the tracker lists on GitHub are already formatted in a way that they can be directly pasted into the file without having to worry about formatting. Example.
I can totally understand if nobody wants to do the work, but I would greatly appreciate it and possibly others that are looking for a stopgap for the lacking feature.
If this already exists, go ahead and call me an idiot and while you're at it drop a link ;)
I just found a little tool called Power Automate and it pretty much does what I was looking for. It's not quite as elegant as a single click script but it does the job. Sadly I can't share the "flow" I built because, well, there is no option for it - thanks Microsoft. So, I'll try my best to write it out.
Not quite a "solution" but pretty to close to it.
Here is the "flow":
get file from web // from github for example
read text from file // read downloaded .txt file
read text from file // read qBittorrent.ini
crop text // crop between flags in qBittorrent.ini use "Session\AdditionalTrackers=" as start and "Session\GlobalMaxRatio=" as end and save to cropVar2
crop text // crop before flag use "Session\AdditionalTrackers=" as flag and save to cropVar1
crop text // crop after flag use cropVar2 as flag and save to cropVar3
replace text // replace cropVar2 with content of downloaded file and save to cropVar2
write text to file // write cropVar1,cropVar2,cropVar3
end flow
Keep in mind that any changes to the qBittorrent.ini may change the order of the entries. Which means you have to check if it's still correct after every update and after every change you make in the options. This is a massive cludge after all...
You can input fail saves so that you won't break anything if the order changed.
I'd like to merge at least 2 PDF files into one while preserving all the form elements in the original PDFs. The form elements include text fields, radio buttons, check boxes, drop down menus and others. Please have a look at this sample PDF file with forms:
http://foersom.com/net/HowTo/data/OoPdfFormExample.pdf
Now try to merge it with any other arbitrary PDF file.
Can you do it?
EDIT: As for the implementation, I'd ideally prefer a command line solution on a linux plattform using open source tools such as 'ghostscript', or any other tool that you think is appropriate to solve this task.
Of course, everybody is welcome to supply any working solution to this problem, including a coded solution that involves writing a script which makes some API calls to a pdf-processing library. However, I'd suggest to take the path of least resistance first (CMD Solution).
Best Regards
EDIT #2: Well there are indeed several CMD tools that merge PDFs. However, these tools don't seem to, AFAIK, to preserve the forms in the original PDFs! These tools appear to simply just concatenate the printouts of all those PDFs into a single Printout, which is then presented as a single PDF.
Furthermore, If you printout a PDF file with forms into a file, you lose all the forms in it. This clearly not what I'm looking for.
I have found success using pdftk, which is an open-source software that runs on linux and can be called from your terminal.
To concatenate multiple pdfs into one (and preserve form-fillable elements), you can use the following command:
pdftk input1.pdf input2.pdf cat output output-file.pdf
I am trying to export a larger number of Matlab figures that are generated in for loop to a single PDF file. Right now the best thing I could come up with is to all print them to a PostScrip file using the -append option like this:
print('Temp_Plots','-dpsc','-append')
After that I could convert the PS file to a PDF file. This workflow was okay until I started to use plots with 2 y axis. Unfortunately it seems like Matlab's PS export cannot properly handle this situation and does not color the lines appropriately.
As there is no -append option for the direct PDF export what other methods do I have to append all my plots to a single file without losing the assigned colors or other hickups?
I would recommend trying out the publish command and push that to its limits first.
Following the documentation:
options = struct('format','pdf','outputDir','C:\myPublishedOutput');`
publish('myCode.m',options);
Take a look at Publishing Markup to see how to get the look you want.
This search brings up some possibly related posts, but none that I saw that directly match your issue.
References:
1. Publishing Markup (Mathworks)
2. Output Preferences for Publishing (Mathworks)
3. Publishing M-Files in MATLAB
4. Publish Your Work in Matlab
I am using a MATLAB script to tune the control system on a machine. When the tuning is complete, I would like a report containing text (especially serial number, date/time and the values determined during tuning) and plots, especially transfer functions.
What do to you recommend?
Whatever solution I use should be compatible with the MATLAB compiler so I can distribute my solution to a team of field engineers.
Ideally the report will be a PDF document.
The MATLAB report generator does not seem to be the right product as it appears that I have to break up my script into little pieces and embed them in the report template. My script contains opportunities for the user to intervene and change values or reject the tune if plots don't look right and my hunch is that this will be difficult if the code runs from the report generator. Also, I fear code structure and maintainability will be lost if the code structure is determined by the requirements of the report template.
Please comment if my assumptions are wrong.
UPDATE
I have now switched to use the MATLAB Report Generator with release r2016b and it is working very well for my compiled code users. Unfortunately it means that colleagues who have a MATLAB licence need to buy the Report Generator too, to use my tools scripted.
As the MATLAB Report Generator's development manager, I am concerned that this question may leave the wrong impression about the Report Generator's capabilities.
For one thing, the Report Generator does not require you to break a script up into little pieces and run them inside a template. You can do this if you choose and in some circumstances, it makes sense, but it is not a requirement. In fact, many Report Generator applications use a MATLAB script or program to interact with a user, generate data in the MATLAB workspace, and as a final step, generate a report from the workspace data.
Moreover, as of the R2014b version, the MATLAB Report Generator comes with a document generation API, called the DOM API, that allows you to embed document generation statements in a MATLAB program. For example, you can programmatically create a document object, add and format text, paragraphs, tables, images, lists, and subdocuments, and output Microsoft Word, HTML, or PDF output, depending on the output type you select. You can even programmatically fill in the blanks in forms that you create, using Word or an HTML editor.
The API runs on Windows, Linux, and Mac platforms and generates Word and HTML output on all three, without the use of Word. On Windows, it uses Word under the hood to produce PDF output from the Word documents that it generates.
The latest release of the MATLAB Report Generator introduces a PowerPoint API with capabilities similar to the DOM API. If you need to include report generation in your MATLAB application, please don't rule out the MATLAB Report Generator based on past impressions. You may be surprised at just how powerful it has become.
I've done this quite a bit. You're right that MATLAB Report Generator is typically not a great solution. #Max suggests the right approach (automating Word through its COM interface), but I'd add a few extra comments and tips, based on my experiences.
Remember that if you're going with this solution, you are depending that your end-users will be running Windows, and have a copy of Office on their machine. If you want to ultimately produce a PDF report, that will need to be Office 2010 or above.
I would bet that you'll find it easier to automate the report generation in Excel rather than Word. Given that you're producing a report from MATLAB, you'll likely be wanting quite a lot of things in tables of numbers, which are easier to lay out in Excel.
If you are going to do it in Word, the easiest way is to first (without MATLAB) create a template .doc/.docx file, which contains any generic text that will be the same for all reports and blank tables for any information. Turn on track changes, and insert empty comments at each point that you will be filling in information. Then within your report creation routine in MATLAB, connect to Word and iterate through each comment, replacing it with whatever data you wish.
If you are learning to automate Excel from MATLAB, this page from the Excel Interop documentation is really helpful. There's an equivalent one for Word.
Unlike #Max, I've never had good results by saving figures to an .emf file and then inserting them. In theory that does preserve editability, but I've never found that valuable. Instead, get the figure looking right (and the right size) in MATLAB, then copy it to the clipboard with print(figHandle, 'dbitmap') and paste to Excel with Worksheet.Range('A1').PasteSpecial.
To save as a PDF, use Workbook.ExportAsFixedFormat('xlTypePDF', pathToOutputFile).
Hope that helps!
I think you are right about the report generator.
In my opinion the fastest/easiest approach would be to generate the report in a html document. For that you just need the figures and write a text file, conversion should be trivial.
Quite similar approach would be to create a Latex file. And then create a pdf from it - though for this you'd need to install latex on your deployed machines.
Lastly you could use the good integration of Java in Matlab. There are several libraries you could use - like this. But I wonder if all the complication will be worth it.
Have you considered driving Microsoft Word through its ActiveX interface? I've done this in compiled Matlab programs and it works well. Look at the Matlab help for actxserver(): The object you want to create is of type Word.Application.
Edit to add: To get figures into the document, save them as .emf files using the -dmeta argument to print(), then add them to the document like this:
WordServer.Selection.InlineShapes.AddPicture(fileName);
I have thousands of lines of MATLAB ranging over several scripts that I have commented and broken up into cells. I would now like to publish. I have some universal formatting that I would like to apply. I would also like to be able to publish each script independently. At the moment I have written all these formats into a file called 'Formats.m'. So at the start of every script it publishes with the word 'Format' at the top.
Is there a way I can call in the formatting file without seeing the name published in the final script?
publish has an option codeToEvaluate which might be what you're looking for here.
To publish foo, but run Format first, try this:
>> opts.codeToEvaluate = 'Formats; foo';
>> publish('foo',opts)
If you're working from the Editor, the same option is available as a publish configuration.