How to better combine several PDF files with DVI and PS available?

Question

I got 5 pdf files with their original dvi and ps, but i don't have the tex files which created them.

Now I would like to combine them to a single pdf. I know I can easily do it using Adobe acrobat. But it seems pdf mergers differ in efficiencies and qualities. e.g. the total size of my 5 pdf is 800kb, without any graphs. The Mac OS preview produces a combination file of size 10mb.. ridiculous. Acrobat gives 750kb which is a decent result.

So I think since I got the dvi and ps available maybe I could get better solution?

Answer 1

Using pdflatex with the pdfpages package comes to mind. You create a small tex file and use

\Includepdf[pages=-]{<pdffile>}

Or you can use texexec from context, then you can do it on the command line with:

 texexec --pdfcopy --result=result.pdf 1.pdf 2.pdf

Answer 2

I use pdftk:

pdftk 1.pdf 2.pdf cat output result.pdf

Some more complex cases:

pdftk A=1.pdf B=2.pdf cat A1-12 B3-5 A13-end output result.pdf
pdftk 1.pdf cat 2-30even output result.pdf

pdftk can do other stuff as well (split attachments (images) from document, fill in forms, ...)