Re: PDF::API2 fails combining pdf 1.3 and 1.4

[Anonymous Monk]

in reply to PDF::API2 fails combining pdf 1.3 and 1.4

You could try CAM::PDF ;) appendpdf.pl - Append one PDF to another

[Anonymous Monk]

I could, but I need also to include also jpeg and tiff images. After a quick look, I had the impression that CAM::PDF does not support jpeg and tiff, but I may be in error, of course.

Besides, I am not sure that this is a bug of PDF::API2. It could be an Acrobat's problem or the result of a malformed .pdf file. Unfortunately, I have no control on my source files. Interestingly, I tried to combine the two source .pdf with Acrobat pro 9 and it also fails, but in a different way. I tried also pdftk and found that it behaves in the same way as Acrobat pro.

I may have to convert the .pdf into bitmaps and include them as such, but it seems a pity.

Thanks,

Giovanni

[Anonymous Monk]

I learned that you should not combine pdf files with different pdf versions. They can be converted by reinterpreting them in ghostscript, as below.

gs -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -dCompatibilityLevel=1.4
            -dNOPAUSE -dQUIET -dBATCH
            -sOutputFile=clean.pdf original.pdf
# In windows, replace 'gs' with 'gswin32c.exe'

that made the trick for me. It's trivial to call ghostscrip with 'exec' or 'system' from perl.

It wasn't a perl problem and I should not have posted it in perlmonks, probably, but I wanted to share the solution anyway.

Cheers

Giovanni