[lug] Combining pdf documents

[D. Stimits]

Tkil wrote:

> >>>>>"Wayde" == J Wayde Allen  writes:
>
>
> Wayde> I need to combine a number of pdf papers into a single
> Wayde> document.  I'm wondering how best to do that?  Can I do this
> Wayde> using LaTeX?  If so how?  Additionally I need to add some
> Wayde> preface material and update page numbering.
>
> Your best bet is to get sane source material (e.g. the original
> documents that generated the PDF).  Not always possible, but
> definitely better than working with the output PDF.  Of course, some
> of the source is probably MS Word or similar bletcherous formats,
> so even that might not help you all that much, sadly.
>
> Think of PDF as electronic paper, and you're not too far off.
>
> There might be ways to join pages together in the realm of PDF, but
> it'd be touchy at best.  Also, doing things like changing page numbers
> would be ... challenging.  (Just masking out the page numbers
> themselves is one thing, and might be doable; but what do you do if
> the text says "see figure 5 on page 8" or whatever?)
>
> If you do have the time to do it, extracting the text and resetting it
> might be possible.  It'd be the most intensive by far -- especially if
> you have equations and displays / charts -- but it is the only way to
> get perfect output.
>
> If you are happy enough to just do your own preface and wrapping
> pages, then the suggestion to use pdf2ps on the individual documents,
> render your additional pages as postscript, merge them (there's a
> ps that does that, assuming that pdf2ps generates correct
> document structuring convention comments), then distill the whole
> thing back to PDF.
>
> Good luck,
> t.
>
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I liked the earlier suggestion to format to ps, combine, and then you 
can go back to pdf. Postscript is almost plain text (I found that some 
laser printers demand the end of line be either unix style \n, or 
windows style \r\n, or they fail...though I forget which it was they 
required). Postscript in text format is pretty simple to merge by hand 
if needed.

D. Stimits, stimits AT attbi DOT com