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<body class='hmmessage'><div dir='ltr'><br><br><div>> Date: Thu, 16 Jul 2015 18:59:16 -0400<br>> From: John@wexfordpress.com<br>> To: scribus@lists.scribus.net<br>> Subject: Re: [scribus] merging pdf files.<br>> <br>> On Thu, 16 Jul 2015 15:01:02 -0400<br>> William Bader <williambader@hotmail.com> wrote:<br>> <br>> > <br>> > > Date: Thu, 16 Jul 2015 14:18:13 -0400<br>> > > From: John@wexfordpress.com<br>> > > To: scribus@lists.scribus.net<br>> > > Subject: [scribus] merging pdf files.<br>> > > <br>> > > I have roughly 200 pdf files that I need to<br>> > > merge into one file. They constitute the<br>> > > pages of a book. Some are the product of<br>> > > Scribus and some are not. Eventually all will<br>> > > be. All are the same page size. I have tried<br>> > > pdftk, a Ghostscript command and so on.<br>> > > Nothing seems to work even on small subsets.<br>> > > What do you folks use?<br>> > > <br>> > > My environment is Slackware linux 14.1<br>> > > <br>> > > -- <br>> > > John Culleton<br>> > > Wexford Press<br>> > > Book layout, typesetting and Indexing<br>> > > Free list of books for self-publishers:<br>> > > http://wexfordpress.net/shortlist.html<br>> > <br>> > <br>> > I have used both ghostscript and poppler<br>> > pdfunite to combine small numbers of PDFs. With<br>> > ghostscript, the command would be gs -q<br>> > -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -sDEVICE=pdfwrite<br>> > -dCompatibilityLevel=1.4 -sOutputFile=new.pdf<br>> > -c .setpdfwrite -f *.pdf It is important to<br>> > have a recent version of gs like 9.16.<br>> > http://www.ghostscript.com/ Depending on the<br>> > files and the version of gs, -dUseFastColor or<br>> > -dNOGC might make it run faster. If it does not<br>> > work, you can file a bug report at<br>> > http://bugs.ghostscript.com/ With poppler<br>> > pdfunite, the command would be pdfunite *.pdf<br>> > new.pdf The current release is poppler 0.34.0<br>> > http://poppler.freedesktop.org/ If pdfunite<br>> > does not work, you can file a bug report at<br>> > https://bugs.freedesktop.org Regards, William<br>> > Bader, Director of Research and Development at<br>> > SCS, http://www.newspapersystems.com<br>> > <br>> <br>> Irony of ironies. The above script blew up. So I<br>> moved the very first file, just created today<br>> using scribus 1.5.1, out of contention. Then the<br>> script you gave me worked like a champ. I'll try<br>> recreating that first record using 1.5.0.<br>> <br>> Stay tuned. And thanks to all who responded.<br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div>John sent me a sample PDF, and the problem is a bug in Scribus. I submitted a patch at <a href="http://bugs.scribus.net/view.php?id=13241" target="_blank" style="font-size: 12pt;">http://bugs.scribus.net/view.php?id=13241</a></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div>When Scribus 1.5.1 writes hex strings in the PDF, if the hex string is long, Scribus wraps the hex string with a backslash and a new line. Backslashes are not valid in hex strings.</div><div><br></div><div>poppler-based utilities report</div><div><br></div><div>Syntax Error (483): Illegal character <5c> in hex string</div><div><br></div><div>where hex 5c = decimal 92 = the ascii code of a backslash.</div><div><br></div><div>ghostscript-based utilities like pdf2ps abort with</div><div><br></div><div>**** Error reading a content stream. The page may be incomplete.</div><div><br></div><div><div><br></div><div>You can test it by making a long title with File -> Document Setup -> Document Information and then writing a PDF with File -> Export -> Save as PDF</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div>Regards,</div><div><br></div><div>William Bader, Director of Research and Development at SCS, http://www.newspapersystems.com</div><div><br></div></div><div><br></div> </div></body>
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