SIMPLE TTY OFFICE, PART 1: WORD PROCESSING AND E-READING
========================================================

Distraction-free writing is all the rage these days. But most 
writerdeck setups don't serve my needs as a non-fiction writer. Even 
in distraction-free mode, I still need multiple windows to read and 
cite electronic documents. In the past, I've used a virtual machine to 
run Windows 2000 / Office 2000 for distraction-free writing, and that 
works well enough.

However, I have a spare raspberry pi zero w and thought that I might 
create a very lightweight office setup on the Linux TTY (without X or 
Wayland).

Here's my setup for word processing and document viewing. My system is 
running DietPi and I use tmux for "windowing." I'll post the tmux 
setup in the next installment of this little series.

My ultimate intention is to post the content as individual setup 
guides on my gopher hole. I hope it will be helpful for others. I know 
it will be useful to me when I have to set up a new machine in the 
future.

Comments and suggestions can be sent to me at: 
visiblink ( at ) gmx ( dot ) com


Word Processing with a Text Editor
----------------------------------

Creating MS Word-compatible documents with a text editor can be done 
using markdown formatting in your text editor and pandoc for 
conversion. 


Text editors:

If you want word-wrapping and the standard keyboard combinations for 
cut, copy and paste (ctrl-x, ctrl-c, and ctrl-v), you have a couple of 
choices:

1. Use the micro text editor.

   To enable word wrapping and turn off line numbering, my 
   ~/.settings/micro/settings.json file looks like this:

   {
    "softwrap": true,
    "wordwrap": true,
    "ruler":false
   }

   You can also change these settings from within the editor. See the 
   following guides for more information:
   
   https://github.com/micro-editor/micro
   https://forum.garudalinux.org/t/mastering-the-micro-text-editor/32889
   

2. Use the nano text editor. 

   $nano --softwrap --atblanks --afterends --modernbindings

   I've added this alias to my .bashrc file:

   alias word='nano --softwrap --atblanks --afterends --modernbindings'

   I could probably add these options to my nano config file, but I 
   also like to be able to start nano in regular mode (by typing 
   'nano') for editing config files and programming.


Here is the markdown formatting for almost everything I typically do 
in a document:

*Italics* **Bold** ***Both***

>This is a block quotation.

^[This is a footnote.] << note that the footnote is placed inline with 
your text.^[Like this] Pandoc handles footnote numbering and 
automatically inserts the note numbers at the insertion point and at 
the bottom of the page. The material inside the square brackets 
appears after the footnote number at the bottom of the page.

That's it. I don't make use of a lot of specialized formatting. If you 
do, you can find more pandoc-specific markdown information at: 
https://garrettgman.github.io/rmarkdown/authoring_pandoc_markdown.html

Save your marked-up text file with the .md extension.


Markdown to Word Document Conversion:

To convert to the markdown file to MS Word format: 

   $pandoc myfile.md -o myfile.docx


To modify the default pandoc markdown-to-docx conversion styles:

1. Generate a .docx file containing the default styles:

   $pandoc -o custom-reference.docx --print-default-data-file reference.docx

2. Open the file "custom-reference.docx" in MS Word. It contains 
   samples of formatted text (for headings, body text, block quotes, 
   footnotes, etc.).

3. Edit the styles in the document as you see fit.

   If you're wondering what kind of changes you might want to make, in 
   my case, I've changed the default font to Calibri, altered the body 
   text to be double-spaced, resized footnote text to 10pt, etc.

4. To use the custom style, convert your markdown to docx using the 
   following command:

   $pandoc --reference-doc=custom-reference.docx myfile.md -o myfile.docx

There's more information in the pandoc manual: 

https://pandoc.org/MANUAL.html#custom-styles


Alternatives for command-line word processing include wordgrinder and 
wordperfect:
https://cowlark.com/wordgrinder/
https://github.com/taviso/wpunix


eBook Reading
-------------

Use epr (for epubs only) or epy (for multiple formats). You can find 
these programs on Github: 
https://github.com/wustho/epr 
https://github.com/wustho/epy

I had trouble installing epr on one of my devices and had to fork it 
to accept a pull request that fixes the issue. If you're experiencing 
a crash because you have no media player installed, try the fork: 
https://github.com/Visiblink/epr

Alternate: convert epubs to .txt or .html using pandoc. 

   $pandoc myfile.epub -o myfile.txt
                 or
   $pandoc myfile.epub -o myfile.html

Read with an editor, a pager (less or more), or a cli browser like 
lynx.


PDF Reading
-----------

   $lesspipe myfile.pdf | less

To simplify the invocation command, see:
gopher://zaibatsu.circumlunar.space/0/~visiblink/phlog/20260701

Alternate: convert the pdf to a text file with lesspipe and read the 
text file with an editor or pager:

   $lesspipe myfile.pdf > myfile.txt

Note that these methods do not work for scanned image-based PDFs.


Next installment: tmux configuration with a fix for text highlighting.