adds draft post from october

content/posts/2024/71-combine-multiple-pdf-files/index.md

@@ -0,0 +1,53 @@
+---
+title: Combine multiple PDF files
+summary:
+date: 2024-10-26T20:27:05+02:00
+# lastmod: 2024-08-18T14:20:52+0000
+categories:
+  - computerstuff
+tags:
+  - command-line
+  - openbsd
+  - freebsd
+  - linux
+  - draft_post
+
+# showBreadcrumbs: true
+# showDate: false
+# showReadingTime: false
+# showWordCount: false
+# showPagination: false
+
+# feed_exclude: true
+# site_exclude: true
+
+# some help
+#
+# highlighting with highlights
+#
+# use table, as inline creates a padding around
+# and it pushes the text more to the right side (end of screen)
+#
+# ~~~html {linenos=table,hl_lines="3-6"}
+# ~~~html {linenos=inline,hl_lines="1,3-6"}
+
+draft: true
+---
+
+I sometimes want to combine two or three PDF files into one (to print them
+two pages on a sheet, mostly).
+
+I did this recently and here I write it down again so I can find it again
+(I will forget this until the next time I need it again):
+
+```console
+$ gs -q -sPAPERSIZE=letter -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sOutputFile=output.pdf file1.pdf file2.pdf file3.pdf ...
+```
+
+Found on [Stack Overflow](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2507766/merge-convert-multiple-pdf-files-into-one-pdf/2507825#2507825).
+
+I also found another solution (further down at the link above) usable, but it produces much bigger files:
+
+```console
+$ qpdf --empty --pages *.pdf -- out.pdf
+```