This utility takes a markdown file, and creates a new markdown file in which each link is accompanied by an archive.org link, in the format [...](original link) ([a](archive.org link)).

How to install

Add this file to your path, for instance by moving it to the /usr/bin folder and giving it execute permissions (with chmod 755 longnow.sh)

curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/NunoSempere/longNowForMd/master/longnow > longnow
cat longnow ## probably a good idea to at least see what's there before giving it execute permissions
sudo chmod 755 longnow
mv longnow /bin/longnow

In addition, this utility requires archivenow as a dependency, which itself requires a python installation. archivenow can be installed with

pip install archivenow ## respectively, pip3

How to use

$ longnow file.md

For a reasonably sized file, the process will take a long time, so this is more of a "fire and forget, and then come back in a couple of hours" tool. The process can be safely stopped and restarted at any point, and archive links are remembered, but the errors file is created again each time.

To do

• Deal elegantly with images. Right now, they are also archived, and have to be removed manually afterwards.
• Possibly: Throttle requests to the internet archive less. Right now, I'm sending a link roughly every 12 seconds, and then sleeping for a minute every 15 requests. This is probably too much throttling (the theoretical limit is 15 requests per minute), but I think that it does reduce the error rate.
• Do the same thing but for html files, or other formats
• Present to r/DataHoarders
• Pull requests are welcome.

How to use to back up Google Files

You can download a .odt file from Google, and then convert it to a markdown file with

function odtToMd(){

  input="$1"
  root="$(echo "$input" | sed 's/.odt//g' )"
  output="$root.md"

  pandoc -s "$input" -t markdown-raw_html-native_divs-native_spans-fenced_divs-bracketed_spans | awk ' /^$/ { print "\n"; } /./ { printf("%s ", $0); } END { print ""; } ' | sed -r 's/([0-9]+\.)/\n\1/g' | sed -r 's/\*\*(.*)\*\*/## \1/g'  | tr -s " " | sed -r 's/\\//g' | sed -r 's/\[\*/\[/g' | sed -r 's/\*\]/\]/g' > "$output"
  ## Explanation: 
  ## markdown-raw_html-native_divs-native_spans-fenced_divs-bracketed_spans: various flags to generate some markdown I like
  ## sed -r 's/\*\*(.*)\*\*/## \1/g': transform **Header** into ## Header
  ## sed -r 's/\\//g': Delete annoying "\"s
  ## awk ' /^$/ { print "\n"; } /./ { printf("%s ", $0); } END { print ""; } ': compress paragraphs; see https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/6910/there-must-be-a-better-way-to-replace-single-newlines-only
  ## sed -r 's/([0-9]*\.)/\n\1/g': Makes lists nicer.
  ## tr -s " ": Replaces multiple spaces
}

## Use: odtToMd file.odt

Then run this tool (longnow.sh file.md). Afterwards, convert the output file (file.longnow.md) back to html with

function mdToHTML(){
  input="$1"
  root="$(echo "$input" | sed 's/.md//g' )"
  output="$root.html"
  pandoc -r gfm "$source" -o "$output"
  ## sed -i 's|\[ \]\(([^\)]*)\)| |g' "$source" ## This removes links around spaces, which are very annoying. See https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/297686/non-greedy-match-with-sed-regex-emulate-perls
}

## Use: mdToHTML file.md

Then copy and paste the html into a Google doc and fix fomatting mistakes.