Add margin to PDF file when merging using PDFTK or similar

Question

I have a large collection of half-page sized PDF cut-sheets that are held in a folder on my Linux server. A user to the site will want to create a booklet from a subset<

Answer 1

If you use ubuntu, you can install pdfcrop:

sudo apt-get install -y pdfcrop

Despite its name, pdfcrop has the option to add margins:

pdfcrop --margin '29 0 29 0' input.pdf output.pdf

(Note: the unit is bp. 72 bp = 1 inch. 29 bp is approximately 1 cm.)

Then, use pdfjam to do the offset trick for the right and left pages.

pdfjam --twoside --offset '1cm 0cm' file.pdf

Note: pdfcrop does have problems with some pdf files. (!!! Error: Ghostscript exited with error code 139!).