Howto | Convert XPS to PDF

chrisjrob@gmail.com (Chris Roberts) — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 10:47:53 +0000

Introduction

XPS is Microsoft’s attempt to replace PDF, the only difference is that everyone can read PDFs, and not everyone can read XPS. I understand that KDE 4 versions of Okular will support XPS, which may make these instructions unnecessary, although having a tool for conversion readily at hand is always useful!

These instructions were tested in Debian Lenny. These instructions worked for our specific systems YMMV.

Building from source

$ sudo apt-get install libxext-dev libxt-dev
$ wget http://ghostscript.com/releases/ghostpdl-8.71.tar.bz2
$ tar xvvjf ghostpdl-8.71.tar.bz2
$ cd ghostpdl-8.71
$ make xps

Testing

After the build you will find gxps in xps/obj

To test, you will need a test document in XPS format.

$ cd xps/obj
$ ./gxps -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sOutputFile=test.pdf -dNOPAUSE test.xps

Move to bin

You probably want to move the gxps executable into a convenient location within your PATH. /usr/local/bin may be a good destination. Once there you ought to be able to run the command from anywhere and it just work. Not sure what your PATH is? Type “echo $PATH” in your terminal.

$ echo $PATH
$ sudo cp xps/obj/gxps /usr/local/bin/
$ sudo chown root:root /usr/local/bin/gxps

Creating file type

XPS probably does not exist on your Linux system as a file type, you can either create yourself using KDE Control Centre, or in KDE:

Single user:
~/.kde/share/mimelnk/application/xps.desktop

All users:
/usr/share/mimelnk/application/xps.desktop

[Desktop Entry]
Comment=XPS Document
Hidden=false
Icon=application-xps
MimeType=application/xps
Patterns=*.xps;*.XPS
Type=MimeType
X-KDE-AutoEmbed=false

Adding to ServiceMenu

If you are using Konqueror, you can add a service menu (to enable right-click / action menu).

Single user:
~/.kde/share/apps/konqueror/servicemenus/xpstopdf.desktop

All users:
/usr/share/apps/konqueror/servicemenus/xpstopdf.desktop

[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=xpstopdf service menu
ServiceTypes=application/xps
Icon=acroread
Actions=xpstopdf

[Desktop Action xpstopdf]
Icon=acroread
Name=Convert XPS to PDF
Exec=cd "%d"; gxps -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sOutputFile="`echo "%f" | cut -d . -f 1`.pdf" -dNOPAUSE "%f"; mv "%f" ~/.local/share/Trash/files; kdialog --title "Convert XPS to PDF" --passivepopup "Done" 3; echo;

Testing ServiceMenu

You should now be able to right-click on the file and “Convert XPS to PDF”. This will create a PDF of the same name and move the XPS into trash.

References

Howto | Convert Quicktime MOV to AVI

chrisjrob@gmail.com (Chris Roberts) — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 05:57:44 +0000

$ ffmpeg -i "source.mov" -sameq -vcodec msmpeg4v2 -acodec pcm_u8 "output.avi"

Howto | Convert DVR-MS to MPEG

chrisjrob@gmail.com (Chris Roberts) — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 22:02:23 +0000

Simple bash script to convert all dvr-ms files in a directory

#! /bin/bash
for a in *.dvr-ms; do
    if [ -f "$a" ]; then
        b="${a%.dvr-ms}"
        ffmpeg -i "$a" -vcodec copy -acodec copy "${b}.mpg"
    fi
done

chrisjrob: convert