Merging ,pdf files
 

Hi folks,

I'm looking for a solution;

1) to merge/combine .pdf files to a single .pdf file.
2) Each .pdf file will be retained as a single page, not messing all files together
3) It is possble adding notes to the single file.
4) Re-splitting is possible, i.e. able to move any page/file in the single file

I found following links;
Mad Builder PDF Assembler
http://thierry.schmit.free.fr/dev/mb...btPdfAsm2.html

Putting together PDF files (NewsForge)
http://lwn.net/Articles/89939/

NewsForce
http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?.../06/09/1844259
joinPDF
http://www.iis.ee.ic.ac.uk/~g.briscoe/joinPDF/

Any one of them will be best suitable for my application. Or are there any other suggestions

Please advise. TIA

B.R.
satimis

pdftk and joinPDF are the ones I tend to use:
http://www.accesspdf.com/pdftk/

Hi david_ross,

Tks for your advice.

Which of them will be more suitable to my application

B.R.
satimis

I think pdftk can add other data such as your comments, I don't think joinPDF can.

Hi david_ross,

Noted with thanks

B.R.
satimis

The first method is by using convert , directly from the ImageMagick toolkit. You probably already have this one installed on your favourite Linux distribution; if not, almost every known Linux distribution has a package for it. Even if you don't need to edit PDF files you should have it, it is a wonderful swiss army knife for command line image processing. The syntax for merging PDF files is simple:

convert file1.pdf file2.pdf file3.pdf out.pdf

(that is, the last file name is the output file name). This usually works quite correctly, but 1)it is slow 2)I found sometimes has issues with image resolution. So I looked for another solution, and I found pdftk. The name stands for "PDF ToolKit", and really it is. It is a free (open source under the GNU GPL), wonderful command line utility that with a bit of magic allows you to manage PDF files from the command line. It works on Linux, Windows and Mac. pdftk can merge PDF documents, split PDF pages into a new document, rotate PDF Pages or Documents, decrypt and encrypt, fill PDF forms, apply a background watermark or a foreground stamp, burst a PDF Document into single pages... whatever.

The syntax for merging with pdftk is almost as simple:


pdftk file1.pdf file2.pdf file3.pdf cat output out.pdf

You just need to add the magic "cat output" between the input pdfs and the output file name. In comparison with convert, it is truly fast and in my experience gives better results. And it may come handy for when I have to work with PDF files in other ways. Also, KDE users may find nice PDF Concat, a Kommander script that acts as a simple pdftk frontend to merge PDFs.

Hi,


Thanks for your advice.


On my F7 box;
$ which convert
/usr/bin/convert

I have "convert" running.


$ yum search ImageMagick
...
ImageMagick.x86_64 : An X application for displaying and manipulating images.

showing it on repo but NOT indicating "Installed". If installed where can I find it on KDE menu?


$ which pdftk
No printout.


$ yum search pdftk
pdftk.x86_64 : The PDF Tool Kit

found it on repo but not indicating "Installed"


Where can I find it on KDE menu? Thanks


satimis