jiangyangcreate PDF operations with etool
Requires the etool CLI: pip install etool (verify with etool --json version).
Always pass --json: stdout is exactly one envelope, either
{"ok": true, "data": {...}} or {"ok": false, "error": {"code", "message", "details"}}.
If error.code is "DEPENDENCY_ERROR", run the pip command from error.details.install and retry once.
Commands
Merge multiple PDFs into one:
etool --json pdf merge a.pdf b.pdf c.pdf --out merged.pdf
Split into chunks of N pages each (outputs land next to the source):
etool --json pdf split-pages input.pdf --pages 5
Split into a fixed number of parts:
etool --json pdf split-num input.pdf --parts 3
Encrypt / decrypt (use --old-password when re-encrypting an already-encrypted file):
etool --json pdf encrypt input.pdf --password s3cret --out locked.pdf
etool --json pdf decrypt locked.pdf --password s3cret --out unlocked.pdf
Insert one PDF after a 0-based page index of another:
etool --json pdf insert --pdf1 base.pdf --pdf2 extra.pdf --after-page 0 --out combined.pdf
Watermark every page (--target accepts a single PDF or a directory of PDFs; the watermark itself must be a PDF):
etool --json pdf watermark --target input.pdf --watermark stamp.pdf --out-dir watermarks
Rasterize pages to PNG files — needs the pdf-images extra (pip install "etool[pdf-images]"); --input accepts a file or a directory:
etool --json pdf to-images --input input.pdf --out-dir pdf_images --dpi 2