6 Comments

1. 

   David Levner on December 13, 2014 at 4:05 AM

   The perl package PDF::API2 can also be used to create replacement programs for pdftk. I also needed a script that merged PDF files, so I wrote the following pdf-merge.pl:

   use English;
use strict;
use PDF::API2;

   my $output_pdf_file_name = pop @ARGV;
   if (not @ARGV) {die "usage: perl $PROGRAM_NAME input-pdf-file ... input-pdf-file output-pdf-file\n";}

   my $output_pdf = PDF::API2->new(-file => $output_pdf_file_name);
   while (@ARGV)
   {
   my $input_pdf = PDF::API2->open(shift @ARGV);
   my $number_of_input_pages = $input_pdf->pages();
   for (my $page_number = 1; $page_number importpage($input_pdf, $page_number, 0);
   } # for $page_number
   } # while

   $output_pdf->save();
exit 0;

   Reply
   • 

     David Levner on December 13, 2014 at 4:13 AM

     Cut and paste didn’t work too well. Nor did the “code” and “/code” tags that I tried to place around the perl code. And, of course, the HTML obliterated my indentation.

     The inner loop should look like this:

     for (my $page_number = 1; $page_number importpage($input_pdf, $page_number, 0);
         } # for $page_number

     If this doesn’t look right, I’m not fixing it again.

     Reply
     • 

       David Levner on December 13, 2014 at 4:17 AM

       For the correct source code, go here: http://www.panix.com/~levner/pdf-merge.pl

       Reply
       • 

         James on December 13, 2014 at 8:35 AM

         Thanks David,

         Really like your Perl solution.

         It can act as the basis of any number of PDF utilities… just code it up .

         Link to PDF::API2 Docs

         Reply
2. 

   HM on December 15, 2014 at 4:25 AM

   None of these utils allows manipulating pdf passwords, which is mostly what I use pdftk for.

   Reply
   • 

     James on December 18, 2014 at 8:06 AM

     So hopefully someone will update the spec file for the PDFtk to allow building under Fedora 21.

     Reply