Using the pdftotext preprocessor directly with FZF?

[ashprice]

Hello,

Awesome tool. Sometimes, though, I want to fuzzy search stuff.

There is the following script that allows you to switch between an fzf and a ripgrep prompt, which I have modified to use ripgrep-all:

#!/usr/bin/env bash

rm -f /tmp/rga-fzf-{r,f}
FZF_DEFAULT_COMMAND='fd --type f --strip-cwd-prefix --hidden --follow --exclude .git'
rga_PREFIX="rga --column --line-number --no-heading --color=always --smart-case --multiline "
INITIAL_QUERY="${*:-}"
: | fzf --ansi --disabled --query "$INITIAL_QUERY" \
    --bind "start:reload($rga_PREFIX {q})+unbind(ctrl-r)" \
    --bind "change:reload:sleep 0.1; $rga_PREFIX {q} || true" \
    --bind "ctrl-f:unbind(change,ctrl-f)+change-prompt(2. fzf> )+enable-search+rebind(ctrl-r)+transform-query(echo {q} > /tmp/rga-fzf-r; cat /tmp/rga-fzf-f)" \
    --bind "ctrl-r:unbind(ctrl-r)+change-prompt(1. ripgrep> )+disable-search+reload($rga_PREFIX {q} || true)+rebind(change,ctrl-f)+transform-query(echo {q} > /tmp/rga-fzf-f; cat /tmp/rga-fzf-r)" \
    --color "hl:-1:underline,hl+:-1:underline:reverse" \
    --prompt '1. ripgrep> ' \
    --delimiter : \
    --header '╱ CTRL-R (ripgrep mode) ╱ CTRL-F (fzf mode) ╱' \
    --preview 'pistol {1} {2}' \
    --preview-window 'up,60%,border-bottom' \
    --bind 'enter:become(nvim {1} +{2})'

However, I am struggling with the preview. If I understand correctly, ripgrep-all has the preprocessor inbuilt, and the output is passed to the fzf pane, while the actual preview is shown in that pane by rga.

Is there any way I can get fzf to use that preprocessor, without writing a similar wrapper for fzf from scratch? I'm guessing the answer might be no, given something like --preview 'rga --pretty {q} {1}' would only show exact matches, so I suppose you'd need to go somehow from the fzf query to a regex. Potentially one could exact-match for the matching substring in the given fzf result...?

As you can see above, I've been trying to use pistol, too. Great for other filetypes, but no way to jump to matches in PDF...

Thanks for any advice/help!