[Semediawiki-user] Suggestions for file indexing to allow plaintext

[Alex M. H. <amh...@on...>]

Hi, 

I am looking for a solution to upload Word and PDF files and place
copies of their plain text in the body of their associated File: page to
allow search engine indexing as well as plain text preview of the text. 
(Why would anyone want to look at the plaintext instead of the actual
file? Bandwidth limitations, working from a public computer without a
Word/OpenOffice installation or a proper PDF viewer, etc.)

In the past, I have used a modified version of the old SMWHalo
SMWUploadConverter sub-extension (I believe from the 1.4.x era or even
earlier; certainly before the RichMedia extension) to upload Word or PDF
files, then render them, character-for-character, in the main section of
a File page (of course, allowing room at the top/bottom for some
semantic annotations). 

It worked quite well on Halo and non-Halo SMW installations
(1.4.0-1.5.2) on MW 1.15.x on a Linux box.

Unfortunately, it does not seem to work on MW 1.16+ because of this: 

"Fatal error: Cannot access protected property UploadFromFile::
$mLocalFile
in /path/to/extensions/SMWUploadConverter_copy/SMW_UploadConverter-amh-monolithic.php on line 63"

For my applications, I do not need to process any files other than Word
or PDF. Code is pastied at
http://pastie.org/private/tsnl8lulxnxw3hjw08ehg

I have tried the FileIndexer extension, which does allow the file
content to be indexed, but does not by default allow extract plaintext
onto the file page (and if it is configured to do that, it does not
place it on the page in exactly the same format as it appears on the
page, it drops all words of less than 3 characters, replaces all
newlines with |, drops all other non-word characters, and eliminates
pagebreaks, so skimming the plain text preview once you arrive on the
page is essentially impossible). 

RichMedia extension is too big and complex (and Windows server
dependent) to use for my purposes (I'm on Linux), plus it requires
patches to core MW code as well as a full Halo installation, which is
not appropriate or feasible for several applications. 

Any suggestions about how the code in the pastie above could be modified
to work with MW 1.16+? My PHP capabilities (not to mention time) are
somewhat limited, but I think that the solution would be relatively
quick and straightforward for someone is a bit more conversant in PHP
than a simple lawyer (me). 

Any input would be very much appreciated.

Thanks,
Alex
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