Combining multiple scans into one smaller PDF file

You hand write a solution set and it runs for several pages, you scan each page in by hand and make each a separate gif. Wouldn't be nice to make the collection into a single (sometimes smaller file)?

Here is how to do this. Name your gif files topicPage01.gif, topicPage02.gif, topicPage03.gif etc and run the command ``scan2pdf topic*.gif''. The scan2pdf command is a locally written and maintained shell script which does the following (but only on the department suns).

• Creates temporary postscript files for each gif.
• Constructs a temporary tex file which includes these new postscript files one to a page.
• Runs TeX, and then runs the local shell script dvi2pdf to create one PDF file topic.pdf
• Removes all the temporary files.

Not only is the PDF file a nicer interface, but it is often smaller. Here is an example where 6 gif files are combined into one pdf file of size 313864 bytes where as the sum of the 6 gif files contains 723728 bytes. The pdf file is less than half the size.