Re: Automatically add empty pages at the end of a book

[Knut Petersen]

On 09.12.2014 22:45, Urs Liska wrote:
> Am 09.12.2014 22:07, schrieb Knut Petersen:
> > On 09.12.2014 17:38, Urs Liska wrote:
> > > Hi all,
> > >
> > > if I produce scores that are to be printed on double-sided, folded sheets (i.e. 
> > > four A4 pages on one A3 sheet) I need to find a way to add empty pages to the 
> > > end of the score.
> >
> > pdfjam is part of the pdfpages package. Try something like
> >
> > pdfjam  --landscape  --keepinfo --paper a3paper --nup '2x1' --outfile out.pdf 
> > -- in.pdf
>
> I have to repeat myself: My issue is not about the imposing from A4 to A3.
> I want to produce a file in A4 that *can* be imposed on a folded A4 paper.
> So it has to have a page count of a multiple of 4.

Well, then try something like this:

#!/bin/bash

if [ -z "$2" ]; then
   echo usage: $0 in.pdf out.pdf
   exit 1
fi

#
# we need pdfjam, so abort if it is not installed
#

PDFJAM=`which pdfjam`
if [ "$PDFJAM" = "" ]; then
   echo cannot find pdfjam!
   exit 2
fi

#
# we need pdfinfo, so abort if it is not installed
#

PDFINFO=`which pdfinfo`
if [ "$PDFINFO" = "" ]; then
   echo cannot find pdfinfo!
   exit 3
fi

#
# read the number of pages and calculate the remainder of
# (number of pages) / 4
#

INPAGES=`pdfinfo $1 | grep Pages | grep -o "[[:digit:]]*"`
let "MOD = INPAGES % 4"


#
# add 0 to 3 empty pages
#

if [ $MOD -eq "3" ]; then
        pdfjam --keepinfo --paper a4paper --outfile $2 -- $1 '1-,{}'
elif [ $MOD -eq "2" ]; then
        pdfjam --keepinfo --paper a4paper --outfile $2 -- $1 '1-,{},{}'
elif [ $MOD -eq "1" ]; then
        pdfjam --keepinfo --paper a4paper --outfile $2 -- $1 '1-,{},{},{}'
else
        cp $1 $2
fi

exit 0