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Merge PDFs

Combine several PDF files into a single document with the merge directive. It takes a glob pattern and an output path, separated by >:

merge "papers/*.pdf" > "compiled.pdf"

This matches every .pdf inside papers/, concatenates them in alphabetical order, and writes the result to compiled.pdf.

Explicit list

Instead of a glob, you can pass an explicit list of files in [ ... ]. They are merged in exactly the order given (not sorted), which is handy when order matters:

merge [ "intro.pdf", "chapter1.pdf", "appendix.pdf" ] > "book.pdf"

Items are comma-separated and may use single or double quotes.

Multiple merges

You can declare more than one merge line; each produces its own output:

merge "papers/*.pdf"  > "papers.pdf"
merge "reports/*.pdf" > "reports.pdf"

When it runs

merge runs after downloads (including .tex → PDF conversions) and after the ai block, so every generated file is already on disk and can be picked up by the pattern. It also runs before covers and compress, so the combined PDF gets a cover extracted and is included in the archive.

The processing order is:

downloads → ai → merge → covers → compress → qrcode → math → convert

path "downloads/"

downloads {
    https://arxiv.org/pdf/2203.08877 as "a.pdf"
    https://arxiv.org/pdf/2405.01513 as "b.pdf"
}

merge "downloads/*.pdf" > "downloads/all.pdf"

Notes

  • The pattern is resolved relative to the directory you run Scimon from.
  • Files that aren't readable PDFs are skipped; if nothing valid matches, the merge reports an error and the rest of the list keeps going.
  • Output is a fresh PDF — the source files are left untouched.
  • Bookmarks/outlines from the source PDFs are not carried over.