So I am unemployed and applying for jobs. And every time I have this basic balbla done, I have to merge the pdf with my CV and a copy of my diploma so that I have one pdf that I can attach to the email. And it becomes tedious to do this every time.
I have never done much with bash scripting or customizing.
To merge pdfs i usually use pdftk (here) Then I combined this with some very basic script and the actions thingy for kde dolphin (make custom actions)
Now I only have to right click on the folder where I store my cover letter and it creates the final pdf.
I know it is a really small thing, but I feel like a god when I do this.
Am I the only one who feels this way? And what are other uses of bash to automate stuff? what kind of things do you do with scripts?
thanks for reading.
Update: Since I use similar sentences in most cover letters I made a folder containing short text files with the most frequently used sentences. Each sentences is in its own file. Now I automated the writing a little bit. What I have to do is make a new folder and add 3 text files to the folder - address, name, and a file, which is the list of sentence files that should be used. I then wrote a short script that makes a latex file based on those 3 text files and the latex template, converts it to pdf and finalizes it with the previous script.
so i read the man page and find all these options... then run it as a line in terminal to check it works... then paste them together in the script...
is that all it takes to have this machine do exactly what i want?
(strokes cat)(evil laugh)
I one launch button on panel that loads JACK audio system, with extra scripts to have it all connected up right; then load up 4 other audio apps configured to broadcast live audio - music,mic, skype & browser webRTC
but still got lots more to learn about my new super-powers
Recently with bash scripting I learned that dpkg returns fail and success codes depending on output allowing you to do things like if dpkg -i package then; do stuff after package was installed which is cool.
One thing i need to brush up on is awk and sed, the few times ive used them, there so useful in scripts.
I thought I could give an update on what I do with bash scripts. So last time I just combined a cover letter with all my other stuff, which is nice. The use of text snippets was also nice but really not useful when just using the command line.
Then I found Zenity, a really simple gui for bash.
Now I expanded it to just ask me for all the stuff that should go into the cover letter. I can now choose the text snippets from a list, edit the generated text a little bit and it creates the cover letter from this.
The thing is. I understand what it does and how it does it. So for me using this little gui bash script is very easy, but I have no idea how cryptic it might seem to somebody else.