Built In PDF Magic in Debian
Debian has some awesome PDF tools built right in via the poppler-utilspackage that I never knew about. In my previous post I talked about how to make beautiful documents with code snippets using various Sublime Text extensions to convert markdown into PDF. One issue that I ran into was getting a cover page created. As far as I know There is really no easy way to make a nice cover page in markdown. Specifically in Github Flavored Markdown (which is what I am using) there is not a good way to make a page break. The easy solution would be to simple write up your entire document in Markdown, and then make a separate cover page. The problem is how to merge these two files together to make one document. Thanks to the built in PDF tools in debian this becomes very simple! The poppler-utils package has the following utilities built in:
- pdfdetach — lists or extracts embedded files (attachments)
- pdffonts — font analyzer
- pdfimages — image extractor
- pdfinfo — document information
- pdfseparate — page extraction tool
- pdftocairo — PDF to PNG/JPEG/PDF/PS/EPS/SVG converter using Cairo
- pdftohtml — PDF to HTML converter
- pdftoppm — PDF to PPM/PNG/JPEG image converter
- pdftops — PDF to PostScript (PS) converter
- pdftotext — text extraction
- pdfunite — document merging tool
pdfunite coverpage.pdf content.pdf final.pdf
This will create a document called final.pdf (of course you should change coverpage.pdf and content.pdf to match your actual files). Warning: be sure to include the final output file or pdfunite will replace the last file that you type will all over the previous files!
Thank you for reading! Share your thoughts with me on bluesky, mastodon, or via email.
Check out some more stuff to read down below.
Most popular posts this month
- Everything wrong with developer tools in a single paragraph
- SQLite DB Migrations with PRAGMA user_version
- Urge to Edit Old Posts
- Setting up ANTLR4 on Windows
- Reinstalling Windows at 1am
Recent Favorite Blog Posts
This is a collection of the last 8 posts that I bookmarked.
- 21st Century C++ from Communications of the ACM
- Submarines DevCon 2025 Keynote Speech from JoshHaines.com
- How I Use AI: Meet My Promptly Hired Model Intern from Armin Ronacher's Thoughts and Writings
- DeepSeek from Maggie Appleton
- Digital Reality Digital Shock from Christopher Butler
- 10 habits to help becoming a Debian Maintainer from Optimized by Otto
- Tiny corners from Manuel Moreale RSS Feed
- Build It Yourself from Armin Ronacher's Thoughts and Writings
Articles from blogs I follow around the net
“Stop calling it work” – Cedric Raguenaud
Cedric Raguenaud argues that.. “When we label our photographic pursuits as “work,” we unconsciously impose constraints and expectations that belong in the professional world. Suddenly, we feel pressured to maintain visibility, chase originality, and demon…
via Colin Devroe February 10, 2025The Art of Making Websites
Hidde de Vries gave a great talked titled “Creativity cannot be computed” (you can checkout the slides or watch the video). In his slides he has lots of bullet points that attempt to define what art is, and then in the talk he spends time covering each one…
via Jim Nielsen’s Blog February 10, 2025Corporate “DEI” is an imperfect vehicle for deeply meaningful ideals
I have not thought or said much about DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) over the years. Not because I don’t care about the espoused ideals — I suppose I do, rather a lot — but because corporate DEI efforts have always struck me as ineffective and blan…
via charity.wtf February 10, 2025Generated by openring