Print different jobs into 1 pdf?

[Kurt Pfeifle]

Klaus Ridder wrote:

> Thank you very much for your reply.
> 
> I will try out your idea.
> 
>>   lpadmin -p PDFmerge -v pdfmerge:/home/mergedPDFs/ -E -P /tmp/generic.PPD
>>
>> You'd use the "send-multiple-files-within-one-job" CUPS feature:
>>
>>   lp -d PDFmerge /path/to/1st.JPEG /path/to/ascii.txt /path/to/postscript.ps
>>
>> Your backend would receive all the files under one job-title and job-ID,
>> converted to PostScript (since you used a PostScript-PPD for the wirtual
>> printer).
> 
> 
>>
>> Your backend just needs to make sure that the PostScript merge of the
>> arriving files takes place (that's the non-trivial part) and that this merged 
>> PS is then converted to PDF (the simple part).
> 
> 
> If I have a program that is able to concatenate 2 postscript files, how 
> ist it called when I only print into PDFmerge? 

It must be called from within the merging backend.

> There is no call in your 
> commands ...
> 

No. I didn't include the complete code for the backend. That's
up to you. Or to me, should I find the spare time or someone who
wants it done during my working time....

> Is there a program that concatenates any ps files?

No. This is not as simple as it seems (since these files may come
from a zillion different sources, being of different quality and of
different PS levels, some being DSC conformant and some not....

Simply concatenating will not help in most cases....

> I could use latex to do this. Are there possible quality losses using 
> this method (import all ps as full-page latex images?)

Huh? LaTeX *images*??

I thought LaTeX was ASCII source code....

> If I don?t find another way, I could also convert all documents to pdf 
> and concatenate the pdf files whit pdcat evaluation from www.glance.ch
> 
> Unfortunately this is for a student and not for business so there is no 
> money for a professional solution.
> However, it would be quite a nice feature for kdeprint.
> 
> Thank you for your help!
> 
> Regards,
> Klaus
> 

Cheers,
Kurt