Over the last couple of years while using Linux, I've slowly become better at what could loosely be described as "hacking".

Now DON'T PANIC! - don't get me wrong - I'm not some Linux guru who can cut perl code with my toes blindfolded...just somebody who sometimes at a very low level likes taking someone else's code & modifying it for my own needs. Sometimes I might even improve on the original! *cough*.

I mainly focus on stuff that is Palm related, mainly trying to integrate some of the command line tools available for Linux->Palm connectivity with some well known Linux applications.

Here are my (meagre) hacks: Sticky Notes Gnome Applet -> Palm - Perl/Tk Script Modded X-Box, Xebian Linux, SMC Router & Ext 56K4 Serial Modem Christchurch Address/Map Search Perl Script Dilbert Perl Script Pilot-Link read-expenses -> CSV Perl Script Palm Tungsten W & T2, Palm Bluetooth card, Holux Bluetooth GPS & Handmap Casio Exilim EX-M20U 2MP Digital Camera and MP3 player with Linux Tribute to "Thrust" & "HHGTTG". The best computer games ever written! USB ProDrive with SD/MMC card with Linux pilot-doc.el - An Emacs LISP extension -> Nautilus Scripts <- DiddleBug Sketches Iverson-Gleeson Bent Middle Finger Grip (& other thoughts...) Happy Hacking Keyboard Christchurch Bus Timetables for the Palm Connecting Palm to Linux box with USB bluetooth dongle Connecting Sony Ericsson T610 via bluetooth to Linux box The ZX81 & Linux Gameboy & Doom for the Palm! Learning Harmonica using your Palm? gtd - desktop companion to mobileGTD All of them

HHGTTG & Douglas Adams at his best! Very sage advice!

Once while fiddling with the Linux download of WordSmith, I found that it contained a command line tool called wsconv that converts .RTF files (say created in OpenOffice) to WordSmith compatible .PDB's (& vice versa - keeping all the RTF formatting).

"Cool" I thought!

Upon further investigation I found some smart cookie had hacked together a couple of nautilus/shell scripts that automated this conversion to a degree by allowing a user to right click on a .RTF/.PDB and do the appropriate conversion. Neat!

So of course it got me thinking..."Hmmmmmm - how does it do that?..."

So straight into a bash terminal I go & into vim to see how these nautilus scripts things work!!! Ahhh, the beauty of open source software! :-)

Anyway to make a long story short, here are my versions of the above mentioned scripts that do a similar thing to the above, but convert .TXT files to and from standard Palm DOC .PDB's. You need to download and compile txt2pdbdoc making sure that txt2pdbdoc is located somewhere in your path (/usr/local/bin for example). Once set-up, simply copy these 2 files to your ~/.gnome2/nautilus-scripts/ folder (or .gnome) making sure the right permissions are set (try chmod +x). For my own needs I have the "Convert TXT to PDB" script installing the resultant .PDB to J-Pilot . If you don't want it doing that then modify to your own needs! The "Convert PDB to TXT" script copies any Palm DOC .PDB into a ~/txt directory. Again modify this if that is not what you want.

• Convert TXT to PDB
• Convert PDB to TXT

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Thats all folks at the moment! If I come up with anything else I'II post it here.