I'm going to tackle the follwing task:

- merge the bookmark hierarchies of 330 pdf files each containing a
   scientific article.

- the top bookmark text of each file is the file name (e.g. 5-1.pdf)
   and has to be renamed to contain the article's title e.g. "Baryon
   Scattering".

- the merged and edited bookmark hierarchy is pasted back into each
   file.

So far I've tried to do this with Acrobat 5 by hand. But it's extremely
tedious and time consuming so I'm desperately trying to find batch tools
for this. I take everything, free or commercial (shouldn't be too
expensive because it's a low budget project). As a programmer I'm also
ready to get my hands dirty with programming tools and libraries
(python or java preferred, but perl, c, c++ is also ok.).

So far I've tried to concatenate te bookmarks with

- ghostscript: gs -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE -q -sDEVICE=pdfwrite \
   -sOutputFile=result.pdf *.pdf (memory error).

- Multivalent: java tool.pdf.Merge *.pdf
   (some messages: CONFLICT: ~icon+Note+0:255:0 -- discarded.)

- pdftk *.pdf cat output result.pdf
   (flawless concatenation but without bookmarks)

Thanks for your help.

Peter

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Peter Maas,  M+R Infosysteme,  D-52070 Aachen,  Tel +49-241-93878-0
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Peter Maas schrieb:
> I'm going to tackle the follwing task:
> 
> - merge the bookmark hierarchies of 330 pdf files each containing a
>   scientific article.
> 
> - the top bookmark text of each file is the file name (e.g. 5-1.pdf)
>   and has to be renamed to contain the article's title e.g. "Baryon
>   Scattering".
> 
> - the merged and edited bookmark hierarchy is pasted back into each
>   file.
> 
> So far I've tried to do this with Acrobat 5 by hand. But it's extremely
> tedious and time consuming so I'm desperately trying to find batch tools
> for this. I take everything, free or commercial (shouldn't be too
> expensive because it's a low budget project). As a programmer I'm also
> ready to get my hands dirty with programming tools and libraries
> (python or java preferred, but perl, c, c++ is also ok.).
> 
> So far I've tried to concatenate te bookmarks with
> 
> - ghostscript: gs -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE -q -sDEVICE=pdfwrite \
>   -sOutputFile=result.pdf *.pdf (memory error).
> 
> - Multivalent: java tool.pdf.Merge *.pdf
>   (some messages: CONFLICT: ~icon+Note+0:255:0 -- discarded.)
> 
> - pdftk *.pdf cat output result.pdf
>   (flawless concatenation but without bookmarks)

Have a look at this tool: mbtpdfasm

http://thierry.schmit.free.fr/dev/mbtPdfAsm/enMbtPdfAsm2.html

It has various options to handle outlines (what you call bookmarks) such 
as extracting them to some ASCII format, and merging them with files.


Alternatively, if you like pdftk and have programming skills, why don't 
you try to add outline (bookmarks) support there?

In addition: Please send the authors of the tools you tried, the 
offending files, so that they can improve their software. You can also 
run tool.pdf.Validate on them to detect bugs in your PDFs.

Finally, Acrobat5 has some internal Javascript based language, where you 
can write batch scripts in high-level PDF terms, maybe that is worth 
another look.

 From http://partners.adobe.com/asn/acrobat/sdk/public/docs/AcroJS.pdf

"Batch JavaScripts, also called batch sequences. Beginning with Acrobat 
5.0, a powerful batch system for the execution of JavaScript for each 
file that has been selected to be processed. See the document Batch 
Sequences: Tips, Tricks and Examples available one the Acrobat CD for 
more details."

Batch Sequences: Tips, Tricks and Examples:
http://www.aces.edu/ctu/techref/software/acrobat/5.x/BatchSequences.pdf

There are a couple of examples for (re-)arranging bookmarks.

Ralf

-- 
Ralf Koenig
Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter an der
Professur Rechnernetze und verteilte Systeme
TU Chemnitz, Zi. 1/B320, Tel. 0371-531-1532

Ralf Koenig schrieb:
> Batch Sequences: Tips, Tricks and Examples:
> http://www.aces.edu/ctu/techref/software/acrobat/5.x/BatchSequences.pdf
> 
> There are a couple of examples for (re-)arranging bookmarks.

Ralf,

thank you for your valuable advice.

Peter

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Peter Maas,  M+R Infosysteme,  D-52070 Aachen,  Tel +49-241-93878-0
E-mail 'cGV0ZXIubWFhc0BtcGx1c3IuZGU=\n'.decode('base64')
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