can i split a pdf file?

[Chuck Robey]

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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
> 
> 
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