Date:         Sat, 30 Sep 2000 20:14:09 -0700
Reply-To:     kmself@IX.NETCOM.COM
Sender:       "SAS(r) Discussion" <SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From:         kmself@IX.NETCOM.COM
Subject:      Re: how to concatenate hundreds .pdf file into one .pdf file?
Comments: To: "Xu, Meifen" <mxu@amgen.com>
In-Reply-To:  <no.id>; from mxu@AMGEN.COM on Thu, Sep 28,
              2000 at 04:42:01PM -0700
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On Thu, Sep 28, 2000 at 04:42:01PM -0700, Xu, Meifen (mxu@AMGEN.COM) wrote:
> Hello:
> 
> I have produced several hundreds patient profiles which have been piped to a
> certain direction. It is very easy to do one click link to each patient. But
> there are too many files which will be very difficult to move them to html
> site. Some one must be able to tell me how I can combine these single files
> in one file and thus one click will show me all book marks which will
> connect each single profile.

It sounds to me that your problem isn't one of combining PDF files, but of searching
through a large number of them.

I'd suggest two approaches:

  - Find an indexing tool which will manage PDF files.  I believe several Linux tools
    exist for this purpose, would suggest a web search (Google.com is a good site) or try
    digging around at the Freshmeat.net software index site.

  - Find a more suitable format than PDF for your query and/or storage format.  You might
    either modify your tools to create files in some format other than PDF or to create
    non-PDF formats from PDF files.  Again, Linux utilities exist which will do this.  For
    standard PDF files, there is a pdf2txt utility, for "encrypted" or "locked" PDF files,
    you may have to go through an intermediate PS (postscript) file format.  For scanned
    images (eg:  graphical files), you're SOL, as the old saying goes.  It seems that what
    you really want is a database, not a stack of PDF files, with the data you're
    referring to.
    
Incidentally, it should be possible to use a combination of the tools listed in the second
portion of my response to address the problem of combining multiple PDF files, but I don't
believe this really addresses your root need.

-- 
Karsten M. Self <kmself@ix.netcom.com>     http://www.netcom.com/~kmself
 Evangelist, Opensales, Inc.                    http://www.opensales.org
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   http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/    K5: http://www.kuro5hin.org
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