How to print multiple pages per side with one(right) page blank?

Question

Input file is any pdf document. I want to have right side space for writing notes.

output.pdf looks like

!

Answer 1

For this you can combine pdftk and pdfnup:

First create a pdf with an empty page (with LibreOffice/OpenOffice, inkscape, (La)TeX, scribus, etc.) called empty.pdf

Then call in your shell or via a shell script:

INPUTPDF=input.pdf
NUMPAGES=$(pdftk "$INPUTPDF" dump_data | grep NumberOfPages | egrep -o '[0-9]*')
pdftk "A=$INPUTPDF" B=empty.pdf cat $(for i in $(seq $NUMPAGES) ; do echo A$i B1 ; done) output output.pdf
pdfnup output.pdf
mv output-nup.pdf output.pdf

The pdftk command line is expanded to:

 pdftk A=input.pdf B=empty.pdf cat A1 B1 A2 B1 [...]

Answer 2

In addition to jofel's answer,

pdfjam also allows doing this directly, if you are creative with its options.

pdfjam --landscape --offset '-8cm 0cm' document.pdf

By default, --landscape without any nup option would center the page; using a negative offset you can move it to the left hand side as far as you like (optimal value will depend on your input).

Answer 3

The PyPdf library in Python makes it easy to rearrange pages in a PDF file. Here's a little script that rotates each page and shrinks it to half size. Warning: untested.

#!/usr/bin/env python
import copy, sys
from pyPdf import PdfFileWriter, PdfFileReader
input = PdfFileReader(sys.stdin)
output = PdfFileWriter()
for p in [input.getPage(i) for i in range(0,input.getNumPages())]:
    p.rotateClockwise(270)
    (w, h) = p.mediaBox.upperRight
    p.mediaBox.upperRight = (w/2, h/2)
    output.addPage(p)
output.write(sys.stdout)