Web design & FOSS
Front-end web technologies and Free Open Source Software.
Monday 26 October 2009, 6:19 PM
Very handy PDF tool
A friend of mine had to email a multi-page document that they had scanned in. Rather than send it as separate files, they were trying to create one PDF file to attach to the email.
But Adobe charge a lot of money (currently £316.25 inc. VAT) for such functionality. Ow.
Enter pdf toolkit, a cross-platform command line program that enables you to manipulate PDF files in a number of ways.
For my purposes, all I had to do was install pdftk using Synaptic Package Manager on Ubuntu, and then utter the totally reasonable incantation on the command line:
pdftk 1.pdf 2.pdf 3.pdf cat output 123.pdf
From problem to solution in about 10 minutes. Thank you, Sid Steward. Thank you Open Source software :)
PreviousComments on this post
This comment has been deleted at the users request
Jake, I came across pdftk in very similar circumstances a few months ago, and I think I had the same feelings and reactions that you have expressed. It certainly made it quite easy to manipulate the various documents necessary for job applications to suit the needs and requirements of various companies. I fell in love with it after the first command line...
jw
