Where is pdfjoin (Ubuntu 18.04 and later)?
pdfjam Shell frontend for the LaTeX pdfpages package for mingling PDFs.
Debian apt-get install texlive-extra-utils
Ubuntu apt-get install texlive-extra-utils
Arch Linux
pacman -S texlive-pdfjam-7
Kali Linux apt-get install texlive-extra-utils
Fedora dnf install texlive-pdfjam-7
Windows (WSL2) sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install texlive-extra-utils
Raspbian apt-get install texlive-extra-utils
Dockerfile dockerfile.run/pdfjam
https://github.com/rrthomas/pdfjam
https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/254308/printing-two-pages-per-sheet-from-the-command-line
Printing two pages per sheet from the command line Asked 7 years, 6 months ago Modified 1 year, 2 months ago Viewed 13k times 16
Say I start off from a PDF document, say of 12 pages, viewed with evince. To produce another PDF of 6 sheets, with a page setup of two pages per side, I normally use the “Print to File” device listed in the ^P dialogue window. This works out pretty neatly.
I would like to translate this operation for the command line.
To my understanding, this is not an operation that pdftk can do. Please cross check. The command lp, which would accept the option -o number-up=2, does not recognize any device called “Print to File”, which indeed does not show up in lpstat -p -d. I am aware of the post What is “Print to File” and can it be used from command line?. I have installed cups-pdf whereby a new printer named PDF is acknowledged. However, the print quality of a simple text file is way too raw (for example, no print margins to start with). Moreover, if I reprint an existing PDF file on this device, say lp -p PDF existing.pdf, evince can't even manage to open that copycatted output, while this is not the case with the “Print to File” way. I had a look at man evince. At the bottom, it touches upon a few print preview options and redirects to a GNOME-developer project page. Admittedly I am not able to make sense and use of it. Is there actually a way to combine the flexibility of the command line with the print quality that I obtain from that “Print to File” option in the GUI evince?
My test case, again, would be to create from the command line a PDF out of a source document printed with two pages per sheet.
Thanks for thinking along.
pdfcupsevincepdftklp Share Improve this question Follow edited Apr 13, 2017 at 12:36 Community's user avatar CommunityBot 1 asked Jan 9, 2016 at 21:45 XavierStuvw's user avatar XavierStuvw 1,06966 gold badges1616 silver badges4040 bronze badges Add a comment 3 Answers Sorted by:
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There is the pdfnup (or pdfjam) command line tool. You can install it from the repositories of your distribution (sudo apt-get install pdfjam for Debian-based distributions, yaourt -S pdfnup on Arch etc).
The default options will take the input PDF file and produce an output PDF with two input pages per page:
pdfnup -o output.pdf input.pdf Share Improve this answer Follow edited Oct 14, 2016 at 16:56 terdon on strike's user avatar terdon on strike♦ 233k6565 gold badges441441 silver badges657657 bronze badges answered Jan 9, 2016 at 21:56 pseyfert's user avatar pseyfert 83877 silver badges2020 bronze badges 2 This produces the desired result ahead of engaging with printing commands. Man pages are available on-line from Linux.die.net – XavierStuvw Jan 10, 2016 at 12:48 1 For pdfjam you need to add the option –nup 2×1, otherwise it just pipes the document as-is. – comfreak Oct 23, 2021 at 19:29 1 Note that the pdfnup script from pdfjam is no more, you'll have to use pdfjam directly. – vonbrand Jan 17 at 14:05 pdfjam sources: github.com/rrthomas/pdfjam and github.com/rrthomas/pdfjam-extras (pdfnup, pdfpun, pdfjoin, pdf90, pdf180, pdf270, pdfflip, pdfbook, pdfjam-pocketmod, pdfjam-slides3up, pdfjam-slides6up), pdfjam old source: warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/statistics/staff/academic-research/firth/software/pdfjam – milahu yesterday Add a comment 3
To expand on the accepted answer:
Using pdfjam you will need to pass the landscape option as well. The usage is:
pdfjam input.pdf -o output.pdf –nup 2×1 –landscape Note that the extra –angle 90 might save your day, depending on the orientation of the pages in the original PDF.
Share Improve this answer Follow edited May 23, 2022 at 15:38 Olivier's user avatar Olivier 14566 bronze badges answered Oct 28, 2021 at 8:15 Lukas Bühler's user avatar Lukas Bühler 18111 silver badge66 bronze badges Add a comment 0
Yes you can print multiple pages:
command | lpr -P <printername> -p <priority from 1 to 100> Example of use:
ls -l | lpr -P hpprinter -p 2 Share Improve this answer Follow edited Jan 9, 2016 at 23:13 Jakuje's user avatar Jakuje 20.9k77 gold badges5151 silver badges7070 bronze badges answered Jan 9, 2016 at 22:37 DnrDevil's user avatar DnrDevil 23111 silver badge55 bronze badges 1 Hi. This answer bumps against the limitation that, if I launch lpr -P PDF -p 2 the quality of the result is way too raw. It is useful if that is not a requirement. – XavierStuvw Jan 10, 2016 at 12:45 Add a comment