OT: How to concatenate PDFs without pain

[Owen Densmore]

Off Topic but interesting: How to concatenate pdf files:
   http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/software/pdf-append.php
I used this to take 10 book chapters in pdf into a single "book".  I  
did this mainly to make it far more searchable.

     -- Owen

Owen Densmore    505-988-3787 http://backspaces.net
Redfish Group:   505-995-0206 http://redfish.com  http://friam.org/

[Russell Standish]

Which method did you use? Feeding the stuff through pdftex sounds like
the sledgehammer approach.

I have done this successfully for a more limited application - merging
pages from a scanner (and earlier from "efax", fax machine
software). In this case, the raw material was a bunch of ps files, and
I quickly found psmerge didn't work.

I simply wrote a perl script to schlop the PS structuring conventions
in, breaking each document into a prologue, and the page
descriptions. Then concatenate the prologue with the data for each
page, adding appropriate %%Page separator.

This works, because the prologue is identical for all pages (generated
by the same postscript driver).

However, it is definitely not portable. I had to reimplement the
version I did for the fax machine for the scanner, but its not hard -
only 34 lines of Perl.

Cheers

On Mon, Sep 18, 2006 at 01:39:12PM -0600, Owen Densmore wrote:

> Off Topic but interesting: How to concatenate pdf files:
>    http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/software/pdf-append.php
> I used this to take 10 book chapters in pdf into a single "book".  I  
> did this mainly to make it far more searchable.
>
>      -- Owen
>
> Owen Densmore    505-988-3787 http://backspaces.net
> Redfish Group:   505-995-0206 http://redfish.com  http://friam.org/
>
>
>
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

--
*PS: A number of people ask me about the attachment to my email, which
is of type "application/pgp-signature". Don't worry, it is not a
virus. It is an electronic signature, that may be used to verify this
email came from me if you have PGP or GPG installed. Otherwise, you
may safely ignore this attachment.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
A/Prof Russell Standish                  Phone [phone] (mobile)
Mathematics                        
UNSW SYDNEY 2052                 R.Standish at unsw.edu.au            
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[Owen Densmore]

I ended up using the TeX approach .. the simpler ghostscript method  
failed to include the images in the pdf files.  Turned out to be  
quite easy and much faster, and produced a far more compact resultant  
pdf file (the gs version was 2.77 times larger than the tex version!).

     -- Owen

Owen Densmore    505-988-3787 http://backspaces.net
Redfish Group:   505-995-0206 http://redfish.com  http://friam.org/



On Sep 18, 2006, at 9:59 AM, Russell Standish wrote:

> Which method did you use? Feeding the stuff through pdftex sounds like
> the sledgehammer approach.
>
> I have done this successfully for a more limited application - merging
> pages from a scanner (and earlier from "efax", fax machine
> software). In this case, the raw material was a bunch of ps files, and
> I quickly found psmerge didn't work.
>
> I simply wrote a perl script to schlop the PS structuring conventions
> in, breaking each document into a prologue, and the page
> descriptions. Then concatenate the prologue with the data for each
> page, adding appropriate %%Page separator.
>
> This works, because the prologue is identical for all pages (generated
> by the same postscript driver).
>
> However, it is definitely not portable. I had to reimplement the
> version I did for the fax machine for the scanner, but its not hard -
> only 34 lines of Perl.
>
> Cheers
>
> On Mon, Sep 18, 2006 at 01:39:12PM -0600, Owen Densmore wrote:
>> Off Topic but interesting: How to concatenate pdf files:
>>    http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/software/pdf-append.php
>> I used this to take 10 book chapters in pdf into a single "book".  I
>> did this mainly to make it far more searchable.
>>
>>      -- Owen
>>
>> Owen Densmore    505-988-3787 http://backspaces.net
>> Redfish Group:   505-995-0206 http://redfish.com  http://friam.org/
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> ============================================================
>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
>> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
>> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
>
> --
> *PS: A number of people ask me about the attachment to my email, which
> is of type "application/pgp-signature". Don't worry, it is not a
> virus. It is an electronic signature, that may be used to verify this
> email came from me if you have PGP or GPG installed. Otherwise, you
> may safely ignore this attachment.
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> ------
> A/Prof Russell Standish                  Phone [phone] (mobile)
> Mathematics                        
> UNSW SYDNEY 2052                 R.Standish at unsw.edu.au
> Australia                                http://
> parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks
>             International prefix  +612, Interstate prefix 02
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> ------
>
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org