How do you manage your PDF files?

Dimatrix · Post by **Dimatrix** » Tue Apr 03, 2007 6:25 pm

I'm wondering if anyone knows about a free tool which creates virtual libraries for your pdf or ps files. For example, it should have different categories (like in a library) quant, fun, lectures... and when I open one of the categories, I should be able to see all the files in alphabetic order with title, author, ..., comments. By double clicking, the file should open. A search function should also be available for title, author or year and I should be able to sort with respect to any category. A rating function for the files would be cool as well. Actually I need something like I-tunes for PDFs Big Smile

Have searched for something like this, but haven't found anything good. I'm currently putting everything in an excel sheet, with name, author, topic, year... and then attach the file and some comments, so I have my files at hand when I need them. But it makes my Excel file slow. I think such a tool would save a lot of time in the future, have sometimes searched for docs which already were on my computer. And it will get more and more in the future. Any ideas?

jaguaracer · Post by **jaguaracer** » Tue Apr 03, 2007 6:31 pm

if you like i-tunes, just use it to organize your pdfs Wink

Geek to Live: Organize your PDF library with iTunes

I haven't tried this myself, but it looks like what you are after.

edit proper link.

Dimatrix · Post by **Dimatrix** » Tue Apr 03, 2007 9:57 pm

Now this is really unbelievable, thanks for the hint jaquaracer. I should edit my last post and erase the smiley. This is really geek stuff. Tomorrow, if someone asks me, I will reply: "Of course you can add PDFs to your I-tunes library. Didn't you know? Man, get a life, go out and start to talk to people..." Smiley Itunes wasn't made for this kind of stuff, but its actually exactly the stuff that I wanted. If someone is interested, look at the first pic below: [img]/User%20Files/1559/Itunes11.jpg[/img]

I've added my pdf files to the library (drag&drop) with "Stochastic FD" or "Deterministic FD" as the genre for the respective files. Then I added an intelligent playlist with Genre=Stochastic FD and there you go. I have sorted the list with respect to the year and can sort with respect to all categories. The next cool thing is, I can use the search function, and it filters all the categories for the keywords. Below I've searched for Hull. I entered "Hu" and got his paper. [img]/User%20Files/1559/Itunes22.jpg[/img] I can also search for Journal of Quantitative Finance. And I can double click the files and open them! The only problem is, that it doesn't accept .ps files. Which is really a problem. Really interesting, I think I'll use it. Finally I can read papers and listen to music at the same time, which was of course not possible before Smiley .

IAmEric · Post by **IAmEric** » Tue Apr 03, 2007 10:15 pm

Hmm... that does look pretty slick Smiley

jaguaracer · Post by **jaguaracer** » Tue Apr 03, 2007 10:25 pm

yeah, though I don't use i-tunes, I'm considering d/ling it just to use this feature. lol. That looks nice.

Now, can you re-name automatically based on tags? Like say I want to re-name every pdf in my library according to title - author - year.pdf

Dimatrix · Post by **Dimatrix** » Wed Apr 04, 2007 10:31 am

I'm not sure what you mean.Do you mean entering all the stuff in I-Tunes and it will rename your pdf file on the hard drive automatically? I never tried it with my mp3's, but I will check. Anyways, iTunes puts a copy of the pdf in its own folder, so it won't be renamed in the place from where you've uploaded. I'll check...

tristanreid · Post by **tristanreid** » Wed Apr 04, 2007 2:23 pm

Can you play them on shuffle? Big Smile

-t.

Dimatrix · Post by **Dimatrix** » Wed Apr 04, 2007 3:43 pm

Of course you can, just tried it Smiley . Its like an audio book, someone starts reading: "This paper introduces....Let X_t be an Ito-Process with...". And you know, what is special about it? You can use the random function, so you can be surprised with a paper! In a tube, church, wherever you want Smiley

Dimatrix · Post by **Dimatrix** » Thu Apr 05, 2007 7:13 pm

Ok one more thing, found this tool: ps2pdf, where you can convert your ps docs to pdfs online without installing anything. I did it with my few ps docs and now I have all my docs as pdfs in iTunes. Problem solved!

brightSideOfLife · Post by **brightSideOfLife** » Wed May 23, 2007 1:47 am

Bumping of this old thread to give my phellow NPers a glimpse of this:

jLibrary

It's a document repository with tagging, full text search, categories (hierarchical tags), remote access, and more. And when you've found your pdf it reverts naturally to a full screen pdf reader.

On the downside, it's quite buggy and even if it's Java, Linux support is plain bad.