Arch Linux

ancient_archer

Member

From: Slovakia

Registered: 2010-03-13

Posts: 107

problems with pdftk and gscan2pdf

Hello there!

I'd like to ask you whether you could fix my problem:

1) In Simply MEPIS which is in fact Debian, I used to use pdftk for merging pdf files. It was quick and very elegant.   However, in Arch, I cannot install that. It throws me this error: Makepkg was unable to build gcc-gcj package.

2) In Simply MEPIS, I used to use gscan2pdf which is a great program, since it's quite easy, does what I want to, has some good options to choose etc. But, when I install it from yaourt in Arch and I launch it, it gives me an error like "No device found" or something like that. But I have added "lp" and "scanner" groups to me as a user so I don't see where's the problem.

Now, questions for you:

1) Can you help me with these problems?
2) If not, can you recommend some REALLY good, smart equivalents of aforementioned programs?

Thank you a lot.

ninian

Member

From: United Kingdom

Registered: 2008-02-24

Posts: 726

Website

Re: problems with pdftk and gscan2pdf

Hmmm, I looked into this a long while back and can't remember the reasons for these difficulties - old, unmaintained versions of somethings comes to mind.

Anyway, if you have Java installed, jPDF Tweak from http://jpdftweak.sourceforge.net/ is a decent GUI utility (cross-platform of course). Also, have a look at the Python programs pydftk and stapler from http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=77388

I use Xsane for scanning to PDFs on the odd occasion.

ConnorBehan

Package Maintainer (PM)

From: Long Island NY

Registered: 2007-07-05

Posts: 1,359

Website

Re: problems with pdftk and gscan2pdf

I remember trying to fill out PDF forms with pdftk (before evince could do it). It was advertised as having that ability but only if the user could supply an FDF file. I still don't know how one can generate and FDF just by looking at a PDF form. It looks too complicated to do if you didn't make the PDF yourself in the first place.

Anyway... does Arch still not have gcj support? Maybe we should get on that. Turning Java bytecode into machine code has its advantages!

---

6EA3 F3F3 B908 2632 A9CB E931 D53A 0445 B47A 0DAB
Great things come in tar.xz packages.

Stefan Husmann

Member

From: Germany

Registered: 2007-08-07

Posts: 1,391

Re: problems with pdftk and gscan2pdf

Maybe it is not too late to answer to this thread, but in the meanwhile there are working PKGBUILDs for gcc-gcj and pdftk in AUR.

ancient_archer

Member

From: Slovakia

Registered: 2010-03-13

Posts: 107

Re: problems with pdftk and gscan2pdf

Well, it's not late although I found stapler program quite useful for simply joining 2 or more PDFs together.
Perhaps pdftk is much richer in functions.

BTW, I even solved one problem I had with gscan2pdf - the one "No device found" - I solved it by installing packages sane, xsane and sane-perl. Now it recognizes my all-in-one printer so I can scan directly to PDF and don't have to switch to another distribution for that :-)

I hope the solution really lies in installing those packages and not in something totally else. And also I hope that this will be useful for others, too.