Notwithstanding that I might not want to do this because of the large file size, how would I scan a multi-page document into one image file (probably a jpeg)? The only way I know how is to, after making seperate jpegs of every page, manually pasting the images below each other in a photo editor, which of course is a lot of trouble.

It depends what you want to do with them afterwards - eg. why would you want to do this? what problem are you trying to solve?

I would import all the pages into a document editor or similar publishing tool.

It may be possible to use the GIMPs panorama plugin to make a long line out of the pages.
For that matter, you could batch-process the images in GIMP or a shell script using image magick.

I am scanning some documents into the computer to reduce paper clutter. They will be saved indefinitely but probably never printed.

Hmmm ... if they are replacing sequentiol collections of documents, like suitable for a bound volume or book, then it is nice to have all the pages collected in a single file instead of spread out all over a window, when you look at them.

The usual way to handle this is to collect them all as a PDF.

image magick can combine lots of images to a single pdf file - I understand.

You could scan/convert them all to tiff, use tiff2pdf to turn them all into individual pdf files, then concatenate them with ghostscript or joinpdf.
http://www.linux.com/archive/feed/36815

apropos pdf - to see what pdf utilities you already have installed.

1 members found this post helpful.

Thanks, that tells me everything I need to know. It's not long enough to be a book or bound volume, though. The document I had in mind is five stapled pages.

Yep - collect as a pdf. Academic papers are like this.

Another option is to put all the pictures in one source image folder; then create and enter then in a html page with kompozer. You can then easily view them with any webbrowser in the order you want.

How do I do that? I am supposing I would open a blank document in a program than can make PDFs, and then insert images into it. I have KPDF, but I guess it can only read PDFs, not make them. OpenOffice, then?--that's the only thing I know that can do it (insert the images, save the file, export as PDF).

EDIT: Yup, I just learned something new. Inserting the images into an OpenOffice document and then exporting it as a PDF file worked splendidly. I no longer have to have folders of scanned documents with many separate "page x.jpg" files.

Yep - that does it.
IIRC: image magick will also turn lists of images into pdfs.

It's good! Thank you very much!

Just for reference and completeness, the following seems to do the trick (number the input pages in a suitable ASCII-order such as file001.jpg file002.jpg file003.jpg)

convert -page A4 -adjoin *jpg outputfile.pdf

1 members found this post helpful.

I don't remember whether I tried this at the time it was posted, but I just tried it for my latest scanning need, and it works great. Copying and pasting the first part of the above, then inserting filenames, is quicker and easier than wrestling with any image editor.