In this chapter…

…you will learn about the options available within AppendPDF.

AppendPDF Options

Refer to General Command-Line Options for details on the general options.
Refer to Applying Standard Security for more information about the security options and working with encrypted documents.

The following is an example of command syntax for AppendPDF.

$ appendpdf [options] parameterfile1.txt [parameterfile2.txt...]

The table below shows command-line options for AppendPDF.

Options summary

Option Parameter Description
-cmds filename.txt Process a collection of files to run at one time.
-b   Include bookmarks.
-extra   Include named destination bookmarks, links, and article threads.
-eb   Keep embedded files.

-cmds — Allows you to process a collection of commands at one time  (optional)

To process multiple commands quickly and efficiently, use the -cmds <filename> option.  The file specified by -cmds, the commands file, should contain one or more single-line commands.  Each command is just like an ordinary AppendPDF command line without the executable name. The commands file does not support wildcards in file names. The following is an example of command-line syntax when running with -cmds:

$ ./appendpdf -p -l logfile.txt -cmds CommandFile.txt

CommandFile.txt contains a list of commands for AppendPDF to process. Below is an example of CommandFile.txt:

-p -iso32000 /appligent/appendpdf/samples/parameters.txt
-p -iso32000 /appligent/appendpdf/samples/paramsbasic.xml
-p -optimize /appligent/appendpdf/samples/tutorial.txt
-p -w /appligent/appendpdf/samples/paramscomplete.xml

-b — Include bookmarks (optional)

Specifies to include the bookmarks of the original PDF files in the new, appended document. If a page (or pages) from an input document has a bookmark, that bookmark will appear in the bookmarks list, in the correct order, in the final appended document.

Note: AppendPDF handles bookmarks that have been created using “Named Destinations” in a special way. If a file has bookmarks with Named Destinations and you append it using -b, AppendPDF will convert the Named Destinations to Regular Destinations and then make the bookmark. Other Named Destinations that are not bookmarks will be ignored.

-extra — Copy named destination bookmarks/links and article threads (optional)

This flag will copy any named destination bookmarks/links, and article threads into the appended document. The -extra flag will only include named destination bookmarks/links and article threads when appending complete documents.  If you are specify a page range for your input files and -extra is on the command line,  no extra bookmarks or article threads will be copied over into the appended document.

-eb — Keep embedded files (optional)

AppendPDF will keep any embedded files included in input files as part of the final output file. This option supports any file type that Adobe Acrobat can embed into a PDF document.