Moodle Plugin - Merge PDF Files

 

The 'Merge PDF Files' plugin offers the users a convenient way by which they can merge the PDF documents in a Moodle course.

This plugin requires two external tools:

PDFtk (short for PDF Toolkit) is a cross-platform tool for manipulating Portable Document Format (PDF) documents.

LaTeX - A document preparation system for high-quality typesetting. It is most often used for medium-to-large technical or scientific documents but it can be used for almost any form of publishing.

The module is created and is currently being developed at IIT, Bombay (India).

 

Installation

The public repository of the plugin is at https://github.com/Kashmira9890/mergefiles.

Forum discussion

The forum discussion thread about this plugin can br found at https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=352481.

Plugin Usage

Through this feature, now users will be able to merge pdf files in a particular course from within moodle itself.

Plugin Description with illustrative screenshots

After applying this patch to moodle,
 - Go to a particular course
 - Click on settings icon
 - A link saying "Merge PDF files" will appear in the course settings (drop-down menu) list.

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Figure 1: Moodle Course Page

 

 - Then, you get a page listing all the pdf files in that particular course.
 - At the end of this page, you get a button labeled "Merge pdf files".

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Figure 2: Page listing course files (only pdf files)

 

 - On clicking the button, the user will get a merged document of all the course files listed on that page.

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Figure 3: Merged document readily available (in PDF format)

 

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Figure 4: Merged file with page numbers stamped on it

 

Other Features
The following functionality is currently being incorporated into this plugin wherein:

- users can shufffle the listed pdf files

- users can select only a few/all pdf files

- a list of previously merged files will be displayed