Date: Mon, 26 Jan 2009 00:06:18 -0800 From: Gary Kline <kline@thought.org> To: Chuck Robey <chuckr@telenix.org> Cc: FreeBSD Mailing List <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: can i split a pdf file? Message-ID: <20090126080618.GA51983@thought.org> In-Reply-To: <497D0FF3.6090402@telenix.org> References: <20090126001822.GA38314@thought.org> <20090126005156.GJ66858@comcast.net> <497D0FF3.6090402@telenix.org>
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On Sun, Jan 25, 2009 at 08:20:51PM -0500, Chuck Robey wrote: > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > Charlie Kester wrote: > > On Sun 25 Jan 2009 at 16:18:26 PST Gary Kline wrote: > >> > >> Is there a way to split a large pdf file into smaller [ say 1MB ] > >> chunks? Or are there open source tools out there that i can build? > > > > pdfsam ( http://www.pdfsam.org/ ) does both splits and merges of pdf > > files, but it doesn't seem to be in the FreeBSD ports system. > > > > There is a pdfmerge in /usr/ports/print, but no pdfsplit. > > > > It's a very junky way to do it (but the only way I know), use pdf2ps to convert > the pdf to postscript, then you stand at least a good chance of doing the split, > which many utilities allow. You could even do it graphically via gv. The > problem with this (and the reason it might well fail anyhow) is because some > things that pdfs do aren't implemented in any standard postscript level I ever > heard of. It depends how many of the more recent extensions to pdf are being > used. I've done this, *sometimes*. > > Because the pdf spec is fully published, it might one day allow someone to write > a splitter, but because the spec is SO enormous, maybe they won't, either. > Actually, that's a really good notion ... I need to give it some thought. > > > -- Charlie > > > > Thanks, Gents, But according to one smallish pdf file that I send to a web based tool, it was not a real pdf. Or, more accurately, it (the pdf to speech program) couldn't decode it. I'll play around with this more tomorrow. The problem with a lot of this electronic paper is that the lines are sequeezed together. Makes scanning them that much more difficult. Last month I read a book [book-book, from the library!] with more ~1.5 spaces between lines, and even tho the font was small, no problem in reading the entire text. ((FWIW: I'll find the URL of a piece on Hegelian ethics --PDF-- and see if the firefox speech site can grok that!)) gary -- Gary Kline kline@thought.org http://www.thought.org Public Service Unix http://jottings.thought.org http://transfinite.thought.org The 2.23a release of Jottings: http://jottings.thought.org/index.php
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