Add bookmarks/outline to PDF or DJVU files to better scroll through its contents.

These small tools simplify the addititon of bookmarks/contents to PDF or DJVU files.

Installation

Python module

Put the Python module contents.py somewhere in your python path. Or modify the python path to tell where to find the module.

PDF manipulating tool

Install either CPDF or PDFTK.

DJVU tool

Make sure you have djvused installed (via DjVuLibre).

Shell script

Put the Shell scripts (.sh files) in an accessible folder, such as in ~/bin/

In case you only have PDFTK, the second part of the script has to be modified to use PDFTK instead of CPDF.

Usage

Write the contents of the pdf/djvu file

First, you have to manually write in a text file (e.g. contents.txt) the contents of the pdf file you want to put bookmarks in:

• one line per bookmark;
• blank lines are ignored;
• the page number must be at the end of the line, seperated by a whitespace (other separator possible, not tested yet);
• indentation is functional: the depth of the bookmark is proportional to the number of whitespaces at the beginning of the line;
• page offsets in the form +10 or -8 on separate lines;
• if you use CPDF, the caracter " is reserved and connot be used (see generated file contents.bmk).

Convert contents.txt into contents.bmk

The Python module contents.py converts the contents of the pdf file into a format enabling the addition of bookmarks in the pdf with the chosen tool (CPDF or PDFTK). By default, it searches the contents.txt file and writes a contents.bmk file.

The simplest line is therefore, in a Python terminal:

from contents import Contents
Contents().write4CPDF()

See the Python module for the following options:

• page number offset;
• open bookmarks or not (CPDF);
• debug option in case writing the contents.bmk file fails.

Add the bookmarks to the file

This now takes place in a terminal.

With CPDF:

cpdf -add-bookmarks contents.bmk in.pdf -o out.pdf

With PDFTK

First, get the metadata of the PDF file:

pdftk file.pdf dump_data > metadata.txt

Then, modify the metadata file by including contents.bmk after the line containing the keyword NumberOfPages:.

Finally, updade the PDF metadata:

pdftk file.pdf update_info metadata.txt output newfile.pdf

With DJVU files

Use the two following commands:

djvused -e print-outline book.djvu
djvused -s -e 'set-outline contents.bmk' book.djvu

The shell scripts

The shell script addpdfcontents.sh allows, in one line, to directly add the bookmarks in a pdf file with CPDF, provided the contents.txt file is in the current directory.

addpdfcontents.sh file.pdf

The shell script adddjvucontents.sh does the same on djvu files, using djvused.

The thrid shell script, watchpdfcontents.sh, allows to add the bookmarks in the pdf file each time the file contents.txt is modified. This can be useful to see the resulting pdf file while typing the contents file.

Other similar tools

• pdfoutline is very similar. It relies on ghostscript to add the outline to the pdf. I did not find this tool when I developped the present one. Very slow but page number offset can be given anywhere in the contents file (this functionality is now also available);
• simple-PDF-outline-adder also uses ghostscript. The main drawback is that the outline text file must have, on each line, the page numbers BEFORE the title text;
• pdfoutline is Haskell based and requires the level of each entry to be written explicitly (and is not determined from indentation of the text file).

See also

• QuickOutline has a GUI and seems to be very powerful (automatically creates the outline from the OCR of the outline);
• HandyOutliner also treats PDF and DJVU files, GUI based.