txt2pdbdoc(1)

✨ txt2pdbdoc — the glow-up your plain text deserves ✨

okay bestie, imagine this: you have a .txt file, and you want it on your Palm Pilot looking cute in a Doc reader. That's it. That's the whole thing. txt2pdbdoc is a Text to Doc file converter for Palm Pilots, and it's literally so simple it's giving main character energy. 💅

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🌸 NAME 🌸

txt2pdbdoc — Text to Doc file converter for Palm Pilots. periodt.

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🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

txt2pdbdoc [-b] [-c] [-v] document-name file.txt file.pdb
txt2pdbdoc -d [-D] [-v] file.pdb [ file.txt ]
txt2pdbdoc -V

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

So here's the vibe. txt2pdbdoc converts a plain text file to a Doc(4) file in PDB (Pilot Database) format — and yes, that's the format used by all models of the Palm Pilot, no cap. (It can also do the reverse and convert a Doc file back to plain text, because it's versatile like that. 💖) The resulting PDB files can be downloaded directly to a Pilot during a HotSync. iconic behavior honestly.

The document-name is what shows up in the Document List view of a Doc reader application on the Pilot. So pick something cute, okay? 🌈

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✨ OPTIONS ✨

• -b — okay so normally, characters with an ASCII code less than 9 get yeeted, and both carriage-returns and form-feeds get converted to newlines. This option says "no thank you, don't do any of that." Suppresses that behavior entirely. 💀
• -c — ordinarily the text is compressed (slay, smaller files). This option suppresses compression. Just raw, unfiltered text, bestie.
• -d — decode the given Doc file to text. You can write it to a file, or it goes to standard output if you don't specify a file. Reverse uno card. 🔄
• -D — do not check the file type/creator of the file you're decoding. ⚠️ Only use this if you know for sure that the file is in fact some sort of Doc file. Attempting to decode non-Doc files will result in undefined behavior and quite possibly crash. not me risking it all for a shortcut 😭 please be careful.
• -v — verbose mode, aka the yapper setting. For encoding, it prints progress and compression statistics per 4K of text to standard error, plus overall statistics when it's done. For decoding, it prints progress in a "countdown" style. so satisfying to watch fr fr. ⏳
• -V — print the version number of txt2pdbdoc to standard output and exit. short and sweet. 👑

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🍓 EXAMPLE 🍓

To convert a text file to Doc file:

txt2pdbdoc 'Through the Looking Glass' alice.txt alice.pdb

look at her go 🐇✨

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💜 EXIT STATUS 💜

It exits with one of the values given below:

0    Success.
1    Error in command-line options or use.
2    Unable to open source file.
3    Unable to open destination file.
4    Unable to read file.
5    Unable to write file.
6    File is not a Doc file.
7    Doc file uses unknown compression type.

0 is the only one that means you ate. everything else is a little "hmm." 🫶

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🌸 CAVEATS 🌸

1. Document names are limited to 31 characters in PDB format. Longer names are truncated — but the 29-31st characters get replaced by ... to indicate truncation. so she tells on herself. 💅
2. The command isn't called txt2doc to avoid confusion about possibly having anything to do with Microsoft Word documents that use the .doc extension. naming choices matter, bestie. 🙈

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👑 SEE ALSO 👑

html2pdbtxt(1), pdbtxt2html(1), doc(4), pdb(4)

go read those too, iykyk. 🦋

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⭐ AUTHOR ⭐

Paul J. Lucas <pauljlucas@mac.com> — king behavior, thank you for your service. 🫡

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and that's the whole page, bestie!! this is from the txt2pdbdoc manual page, version from January 21, 2005 (yes she's vintage, vintage is iconic 💖). mwah, go convert something pretty. 🌸✨🎀