This utility can "explode" large PDFs into numerous smaller fragments (files) based on a CSV-formatted index file which defines the names and starting/ending pages of each section fragment. The section fragments are each extracted by invoking pdfjam, and the resulting files are named in a way which makes their source document and originating page numbers clear.

Additionally, LaTeX is used to generate an index PDF which lists all the section fragments as hyperlinks, for ease of navigation. This index is typically built from the index.latex.erb template but you can use any LaTeX template written in eRuby (.erb) file syntax.

./bin/build.rb CSV LATEX-TEMPLATE PDF-DIR INDEX-DIR OUTPUT-DIR

See https://github.com/aspiers/book-indices for an example of how to write the CSV index files.

• https://git.zx2c4.com/realbook-splitter/tree/ (Python script)
• http://www.pdfsam.org/pdfsam-basic/ (cross-platform)
• https://github.com/trevorprinn/RealBookExtractor/wiki (Windows only)

Please edit this file and then submit a pull request if you know of any other similar software - thanks!