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How can I add a gutter margin (different for odd and even pages) to a PDF document so that there is room to hole-punch it after I print it? I am familiar with Ghostscript and the Linux Terminal but have been unable to find commands to fulfil this specific need.
Currently some content is too close to the edge. I could use scaling in the print dialog box to create room for the binding, but this would reduce the size more than absolutely necessary and leave a gap on both sides of the page.
A solution that simply adds an extra centimetre to either side of the page (left for odd pages and right for even) would be adequate here since I can then choose "scale to fit" feature when I print it.
My question was initially marked as a duplicate of this, but neither answer solves my problem. I tried using both Briss and PDF Scissors, but they are PDF cropping tools and can only make the pages smaller, not larger. My question is also different because I need to resize differently on odd and even pages. The asker of the original question did not have this requirement.
Do you have Adobe Acrobat? (Not Adobe "Reader") – skub – 2015-04-21T17:47:55.993
No, unfortunately not. I also tried GhostScript as instructed in this answer to a related question, but the resulting PDF appeared identical to the original, as the asker of that question found when he tried it.
– HullCityFan852 – 2015-04-21T17:57:14.7731
Here’s a possible partial answer: use
– Scott – 2015-04-23T11:53:34.363pdftk
(The PDF Toolkit) to break the file apart into one file with the even pages and one file with the odd pages, pad the pages in each file appropriately (I don’t know how to do that), and recombine them withpdftk
. See also [How to] merge two PDF files containing even and odd pages of a book for some other tools.@Scott Thanks, this would certainly work. The padding could be done like this. (Notice that although the question refers to centering the answer achieves this using a manual offset.) However, I have actually managed to solve this in a single step (i.e. without splitting the file). See my answer below.
– HullCityFan852 – 2015-04-24T02:01:02.543