Connect Your Favorite Text Editor to Google Docs Using GoogleCL

Dmitri Popov

Productivity Sauce

Jun 29, 2010 GMT
Dmitri Popov

You can put Google's command-line tools (GoogleCL) to all kinds of clever uses from publishing blog posts to accessing and editing Google Docs documents using your favorite text editor. The latter can come in handy if you want to quickly modify the existing document, bypassing Google Docs' interface and the browser altogether.

To make GoogleCL work its magic, you have to install it on your machine. First off, grab the latest version of Google Data from the project's Web site and install it using the following commands:

tar xvfz gdata-x-x-xx.tar.gz
cd gdata-x-x-xx/
sudo python setup.py install

Download then GoogleCL, and install it as follows:

tar xvfz googlecl-x-x-xx.tar.gz
cd googlecl-x-x-xx/
sudo python setup.py install

To open an existing document in Gedit, use the following command:

google docs edit --title "Document Title" --editor gedit

This opens the specified document, and you can edit it to your heart's content. But what if you don't remember the exact name of the document you want to open? No problem. Run the google docs list title command which lists all documents stored in Google Docs.

Comments

  • GoogeCL document edit

    I was using this for a while for taking notes on an ubuntu machine with nano. But STUPID Google collapses blank lines in the text. Which tottaly trahed my notes which use blank lines to distinguish sections.

    Why the hell did they get rid of the original html based editor. It was plenty useful!

    Google is going downhill fast...
  • Glitch -- newlines

    The usefulness of this is impeded.
    I ended up looking at blank files when back on docs.google.com, and I suspect it has to do with dos vs unix endlines.
  • Does not save changes

    You're better off using a cli editor like vi or nano. Using gedit does not automatically upload the changed file after saving. At least not for me ;o)
comments powered by Disqus
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters

Support Our Work

Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.

Learn More

News