• /tag/pdf-viewers

Ghostscript is a tool for Linux (and on Windows via Chocolatey)

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Creating a single blank/empty PDF page ∞

https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/277892/how-do-i-create-a-blank-pdf-from-the-command-line/277987#277987

(convert is from ImageMagick)

\convert  xc:none  -page Letter  'blank US letter size PDF.pdf'

• blank US letter sized PDF - (8.5" x 11")

• blank A4 sized PDF - (210 × 297 mm)

Combining PDFs on Linux ∞

• Combining PDFs on Linux

Repairing a PDF ∞

Repairing a PDF on Linux ∞

See also Improving e-reader speeds for Internet Archive books

• https://superuser.com/questions/278562/how-can-i-fix-repair-a-corrupted-pdf-file

• See also https://reverseengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/1526/open-source-gui-tool-for-decomposing-a-pdf

Using Ghostscript:

gs \
  -o output.pdf \
  -sDEVICE=pdfwrite \
  -dPDFSETTINGS=/prepress \
  input.pdf

apt-get  install poppler-utils
pdftocairo -pdf corrupted.pdf repaired.pdf

sudo apt-get install mupdf-tools
mutool clean input.pdf output.pdf

One guy said:

I had a corrupted pdf file, because the php file used to download it echoed some errors (in HTML) and NUL characters at the end.

The solution was to open the pdf with Notepad++ and remove all text after the line

%%EOF

Repairing a PDF on Windows ∞

Installed via Chocolatey and used on Babun (Cygwin). This process is untested.

"/cygdrive/c/Program Files/gs/gs9.23/bin/gswin64c.exe" ^
  -o output.pdf ^
  -sDEVICE=pdfwrite ^
  -dPDFSETTINGS=/prepress ^
  input.pdf

Use quit to exit.

Rotating PDFs on Linux ∞

(convert is from ImageMagick)

Something was drawn landscape but scanned portrait? Try:

\nice -n 20  \convert  -density 400  -rotate 270  source.pdf  target.pdf

or maybe if it was scanned portrait but upside-down, try:

\nice -n 20  \convert  -density 400  -rotate 180  source.pdf  target.pdf

• The 400 density is really high quality. If it takes too long, reduce that number. Try 150.

• Why nice it? Because your computer might lock up in the attempt. It's stupid, I know.

Converting a PDF to a JPG on Linux ∞

(convert is from ImageMagick)

Someone sent a fax, which is delivered as a PDF but it's upside-down? Try:

\nice -n 20  \convert  -density 150  source.pdf  target.jpg

You can also rotate it at the same time, of course:

\nice -n 20  \convert  -density 150  -rotate 180  source.pdf  target.jpg

• Why nice it? Because your computer might lock up in the attempt. It's stupid, I know.

Un-encrypting PDFs on Linux ∞

(encryption)

(convert is from ImageMagick)

\convert  name.pdf  unencrypted.pdf

It will create a low-resolution PDF from an encrypted PDF.

• 2009-02-04 - There's also pdfcrack in the PCLinuxOS repository.

PDF creators ∞

(TODO - some are bookmarked)

• https://www.pdfforge.org/ [ 1 ]

  • Get the latest full installer at http://download.pdfforge.org/download/pdfcreator/PDFCreator-stable
  • 2006-04-22 or earlier - version not recorded, at most 0.9.1 -- Seems to crash in some cases.. ugh.

Last updated 2022-07-27 at 17:13:33

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