linux piping ( convert -> pdf2ps -> lp)

Question

Ok, so I can print a pdf doing:

pdf2ps file.pdf - | lp -s

But now I want to use convert to merge several pdf files, I can do this with:

convert file1.pdf file2.pdf merged.pdf

which merges file1.pdf and file2.pdf into merged.pdf, target can be replaced with '-'.

Question

How could I pipe convert into pdf2ps and then into lp though?

Answer 1

convert file1.pdf file2.pdf - | pdf2ps - - | lp -s should do the job.

You send the output of the convert command to psf2ps, which in turn feeds its output to lp.

Answer 2

convert file1.pdf file2.pdf merged.pdf
pdf2ps merged.pdf - | lp -s

Answer 3

You can use /dev/stdout like a file:

convert file1.pdf file2.pdf /dev/stdout | ...

I use gs for merging pdfs like:

gs -q -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sOutputFile=/dev/stdout -f ...