Recoll: seraching for files or quotations inside files.

How many times teachers and students would like to remember where they have put an important quotation? How would you find it in a computer full of files? Is a computer capable to look inside your files? Would you find it in time for your latest paper/project etc…?

Today we’re presenting Recoll, which is a full text search QT based free, open source program especially made for Unix-like and Linux but it is also available for Windows and Mac systems, licensed under GPL. It provides efficient desktop full text search from single-word to arbitrarily complex boolean searches, basically it indexes the documents data (along with their compressed versions) and huge number of files then let you find quickly whatever you search for. Recoll updates its index at designed intervals (for example through Cron tasks) but if desired, the indexing task can run as a file-system monitoring daemon for real-time index updates.

The Recoll document conversion and text extraction architecture makes it extremely easy to write new filters, and many document types are supported. Indexes the contents of many document types: text, HTML, E-Mail stores of all kinds, OpenOffice.org, Microsoft Office and Office Open XML, AbiWord, KWord, Gaim, Lyx, Scribus, PDF, WordPerfect, PostScript, RTF, TeX, DVI, DjVu, MP3 and other audio file formats, JPEG and other image file formats.

The following web pages are available if you wish to download; or look for documentation; or screenshots. Enjoy!

Graph Visualization Program

Most teachers and students would like to put their understanding or studies in a graphic mode. It seems to be much easier to remember and/or  to study. We are today presenting another free and open source program for graphics - it's called graphviz.

It has important applications in networking, bio-informatics, software engineering, database and web design, machine learning, and in visual interfaces for other technical domains.

The Graphviz layout programs take descriptions of graphs in a simple text language, and make diagrams in useful formats, such as images and SVG for web pages; PDF or Postscript for inclusion in other documents; or display in an interactive graph browser.

GraphViz lets you use simple text or GXL (a variant of XML) to describe charts, and then it does the drawing work for you. See the Gallery for examples of the types of graphics it can create. Operating Systems: Windows, Linux, OS X.

If you need to download it go here. Documentation is found here. Any discussions are carried out in the forum. The Gallery will show you work which could be done using graphviz.

Zotero

How many times it happens that we're reading, listening or watching a video on the internet and we wish to save it for later use? Others do collect all these kind of media but then they'll forget where they had put them!

We need something free, open source and easy to use. Well, zotero is a great friend with everybody especially teachers and students. Zotero [zoh-TAIR-oh] is a free, easy-to-use tool to help you collect, organize, cite, and share your research sources.

Zotero is the only research tool that automatically senses content in your web browser, allowing you to add it to your personal library with a single click. Whether you're searching for a preprint on arXiv.org, a journal article from JSTOR, a news story from the New York Times, or a book from your university library catalog, Zotero has you covered with support for thousands of sites.

Zotero collects all your research in a single, searchable interface. You can add PDFs, images, audio and video files, snapshots of web pages, and really anything else. Zotero automatically indexes the full-text content of your library, enabling you to find exactly what you're looking for with just a few keystrokes. It is available for windows, mac and linux.

For downloads click here. For help click here. 

 

Editing PDF files

Most teachers and students use pdf documents. Teachers do share and download important files as pdf. What's a pdf file? It's a portable document file. Some teachers like it because the student receives it as it is. Other formats may change when the student opens them on his electronic device, especially changing from a pc to mobile gadgets!

On the other hand, what can a teacher do when he/she has a pdf file but wishes to do some changes? Teachers do editing all the time as they see the students' reaction to their personalised notes. They may change some words or phrases or re-write the file completely.

Today we present Master PDF editor. Teachers and students need it especially when presenting some important information and at the last minute they see some mistakes or wish to change some parts of it.

Master PDF editor is available for Mac, Windows and Linux operating systems. In other words it's cross-platform. If one prefers YouTube tutorials than one must visit this link. Others might prefer the official manual of the program.