How to add page numbers to Postscript/PDF

Question

If you\'ve got a large document (500 pages+) in Postscript and want to add page numbers, does anyone know how to do this?

Answer 1

Further to captaincomic's solution, I've extended it to support the starting of page numbering at any page.

Requires enscript, pdftk 1.43 or greater and pdfjam (for pdfjoin utility)

#!/bin/bash
input="$1"
count=$2
blank=$((count - 1))
output="${1%.pdf}-header.pdf"
pagenum=$(pdftk "$input" dump_data | grep "NumberOfPages" | cut -d":" -f2)
(for i in $(seq "$blank"); do echo; done) | enscript -L1 -B --output - | ps2pdf - > /tmp/pa$$.pdf
(for i in $(seq "$pagenum"); do echo; done) | enscript -a ${count}- -L1 -F Helvetica@10 --header='||Page $% of $=' --output - | ps2pdf - > /tmp/pb$$.pdf
pdfjoin --paper letter --outfile /tmp/join$$.pdf /tmp/pa$$.pdf /tmp/pb$$.pdf &>/dev/null
cat /tmp/join$$.pdf | pdftk "$input" multistamp - output "$output"
rm /tmp/pa$$.pdf
rm /tmp/pb$$.pdf
rm /tmp/join$$.pdf

For example.. place this in /usr/local/bin/pagestamp.sh and execute like:

pagestamp.sh doc.pdf 3

This will start the page number at page 3.. useful when you have coversheets, title pages and table of contents, etc.

The unfortunate thing is that enscript's --footer option is broken, so you cannot get the page numbering at the bottom using this method.