R help - Dec 2023 - adding "Page X of XX" to PDFs

Having read all of the replies, it seems there are solutions for the
question and the OP points out that some solutions such as making the
document twice will affect the creation date.

I suspect the additional time to do so is seconds or at most minutes so it
may not be a big deal.

But what about the idea of creating a PDF with a placeholder like "Page N
of
XXX" and after the file has been created, dates and all, perhaps edit it
programmatically and replace all instances of XXX with something of the same
length like " 23" as there seem to be tools like the pdftools package
that
let you get the number of pages. I have no idea if some program, perhaps
external, can do that and retain the date you want.

-----Original Message-----
From: R-help <r-help-bounces at r-project.org> On Behalf Of Dennis Fisher
Sent: Friday, December 1, 2023 3:53 PM
To: r-help at r-project.org
Subject: [R] adding "Page X of XX" to PDFs

OS X
R 4.3.1

Colleagues

I often create multipage PDFs [pdf()] in which the text "Page X"
appears in
the margin.  These PDFs are created automatically using a massive R script.

One of my clients requested that I change this to:
	Page X of XX 
where XX is the total number of pages.  

I don't know the number of expected pages so I can't think of any clever
way
to do this.  I suppose that I could create the PDF, find out the number of
pages, then have a second pass in which the R script was fed the number of
pages.  However, there is one disadvantage to this -- the original PDF
contains a timestamp on each page -- the new version would have a different
timestamp -- so I would prefer to not use this approach.

Has anyone thought of some terribly clever way to solve this problem?

Dennis

Dennis Fisher MD
P < (The "P Less Than" Company)
Phone / Fax: 1-866-PLessThan (1-866-753-7784)
www.PLessThan.com

______________________________________________
R-help at r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see
https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.

You could easily omit the Page X of xX, but leave the timestamp

Then add Page X of XX programmatically using pdftools or some similar pdf
command line tools.

On Sat, 2 Dec 2023, 22:35 , <avi.e.gross at gmail.com> wrote:
> Having read all of the replies, it seems there are solutions for the
> question and the OP points out that some solutions such as making the
> document twice will affect the creation date.
>
> I suspect the additional time to do so is seconds or at most minutes so it
> may not be a big deal.
>
> But what about the idea of creating a PDF with a placeholder like
"Page N
> of
> XXX" and after the file has been created, dates and all, perhaps edit
it
> programmatically and replace all instances of XXX with something of the
> same
> length like " 23" as there seem to be tools like the pdftools
package that
> let you get the number of pages. I have no idea if some program, perhaps
> external, can do that and retain the date you want.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: R-help <r-help-bounces at r-project.org> On Behalf Of Dennis
Fisher
> Sent: Friday, December 1, 2023 3:53 PM
> To: r-help at r-project.org
> Subject: [R] adding "Page X of XX" to PDFs
>
> OS X
> R 4.3.1
>
> Colleagues
>
> I often create multipage PDFs [pdf()] in which the text "Page X"
appears in
> the margin.  These PDFs are created automatically using a massive R script.
>
> One of my clients requested that I change this to:
>         Page X of XX
> where XX is the total number of pages.
>
> I don't know the number of expected pages so I can't think of any
clever
> way
> to do this.  I suppose that I could create the PDF, find out the number of
> pages, then have a second pass in which the R script was fed the number of
> pages.  However, there is one disadvantage to this -- the original PDF
> contains a timestamp on each page -- the new version would have a different
> timestamp -- so I would prefer to not use this approach.
>
> Has anyone thought of some terribly clever way to solve this problem?
>
> Dennis
>
> Dennis Fisher MD
> P < (The "P Less Than" Company)
> Phone / Fax: 1-866-PLessThan (1-866-753-7784)
> www.PLessThan.com
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide
> http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide
> http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>
	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]