Mojca Miklavec
2014-01-07 22:53:31 UTC
Hello,
I recently noticed a question on a local forum, asking "How do I split
a large PDF file in multiple parts, for example page 1 & 2 together in
doc1.pdf, page 3 & 4 together in doc2.pdf, ..."
I know how to use TeX to do the job ("If all you have is a hammer,
everything looks like a nail"), but apparently pdfseparate & pdfunite
are very handy for these kinds of tasks. Given that a big bunch of
handy pdf tools for windows are already present (pdffonts.exe etc.
from xpdf), I was wondering if it would be nice/desirable if TeX Live
also included tools like pdfseparate.exe and pdfunite.exe (provided by
poppler). They are easily accessible on linux/mac, but getting them on
Windows seems less than trivial (I actually found a random third-party
site hosting poppler utils for Windows, but having them as part of TL
would be a lot easier).
Alternatively I imagine that someone could probably just as well
quickly come up with a lua script to do the same, possible even more
powerful and flexible than pdfseparate & pdfunite (allowing to specify
extraction of pages 2-4,8,10-14 into a single document for example, or
combining pages 1-5 and 10-11 from doc1.pdf with pages 3-8 from
doc2.pdf). ConTeXt provides a lot of functionality of that kind
already (but available options are well hidden).
What do you think? Would having these tools be useful for windows
users? Would it be feasible to add them?
Mojca
I recently noticed a question on a local forum, asking "How do I split
a large PDF file in multiple parts, for example page 1 & 2 together in
doc1.pdf, page 3 & 4 together in doc2.pdf, ..."
I know how to use TeX to do the job ("If all you have is a hammer,
everything looks like a nail"), but apparently pdfseparate & pdfunite
are very handy for these kinds of tasks. Given that a big bunch of
handy pdf tools for windows are already present (pdffonts.exe etc.
from xpdf), I was wondering if it would be nice/desirable if TeX Live
also included tools like pdfseparate.exe and pdfunite.exe (provided by
poppler). They are easily accessible on linux/mac, but getting them on
Windows seems less than trivial (I actually found a random third-party
site hosting poppler utils for Windows, but having them as part of TL
would be a lot easier).
Alternatively I imagine that someone could probably just as well
quickly come up with a lua script to do the same, possible even more
powerful and flexible than pdfseparate & pdfunite (allowing to specify
extraction of pages 2-4,8,10-14 into a single document for example, or
combining pages 1-5 and 10-11 from doc1.pdf with pages 3-8 from
doc2.pdf). ConTeXt provides a lot of functionality of that kind
already (but available options are well hidden).
What do you think? Would having these tools be useful for windows
users? Would it be feasible to add them?
Mojca