Convert on Michael’s Domain

How to determine and convert text file encoding (file, enca, iconv)

Wed, 22 Apr 2009 00:00:00 +0000

To determine the file type of the file “sample.txt” you just type:file sample.txtUsually it’ll tell you only that it is a text file. To get to know more about the encoding type:enca -L none sample.textThe -L switch tells the program what language is used in the file. If you don’t know, just use none.To convert the encoding from ISO-8859-1 (latin1) to UTF-8:iconv --from-code=ISO-8859-1 --to-code=UTF-8 sample_iso8859-1.txt > sample_utf-8.txt

Editing (resizing, format converting, compressing) images in the command line with ImageMagick (mogrify, convert)

Wed, 23 May 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Resize all tif images in the current directory:mogrify -resize 25% 25% *.tifResize all jpeg images in the current directory to a width of 614 pixels and keep the image ratio constant:mogrify -resize 614 *.jpgAs above, but resize the hight to 614 pixels:mogrify -resize x614 *.jpgConvert all bmp imgaes in the current directory into tiff images:mogrify -format tiff *.bmpCompress all tiff images in the current directory with ZIP compression:mogrify -compress ZIP *.tiffI tried to convert also pict files (from Macintosh), but without success, although the pict file format appears to be supported by Imagemagick. In order to make sure that ImageMagick knows that the file to convert is a pict file I used this command:convert pict:Photo0024.PICT tiff:Photo0002.tifThere is also a picttoppm utility in the netpbm package, but it was not anymore included in the version that Suse 9 uses; so I couldn’t check that out…Interestingly PixiePlus can display pict files, where does it take the routines from?If you have very large images, the default limits of ImageMagick are resulting in an error(e.g. mogrify-im6.q16: width or height exceeds limit) and you need to edit /etc/ImageMagick-6/policy.xml!

How to convert EMF files into SVG format

Tue, 06 Mar 2007 00:00:00 +0000

The need for this appeared because the Unicorn software that controls our Äkta Explorer can only export the raw chromatographic curves in EMF format. Pathetic. After trying out various things, I went with OpenOffice. OpenOffice Draw can import EMF files and save as SVG. Other applications capable of opening EMF are FreeHand and CorelDraw (tested on Macintosh). However, FreeHand cannot export as SVG.