PDFShuffler was a fun project for me. A customer of mine – Marc Lenahan and I had been having an email exchange, when he asked if I could help him with some software for his legal workflow. The answer was yes, and so I initially wrote PDFShuffler as a custom solution for Marc. We were happy enough with the result that we decided to offer the final product for sale on the Mac App Store.
PDFShuffler has essentially one function – it takes a PDF and twins it. What that means is that a PDF with 4 pages (1, 2, 3, 4) becomes a PDF with 8 pages, each of the original 4 having been duplicated (1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 4).
Why is this a useful thing? Best to let Marc explain that in his own words:
PDFShuffler turns the PDF you must analyze into the one you want to analyze. It is the tool that lawyers, teachers, presenters, researchers & scientists have been needing for years.
Its magic is in its simplicity. It takes your PDF and creates a new document in which each page is duplicated in order. Your original document, with pages 1, 2, 3, etc, remains untouched. Your new document now has pages 1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, etc. You are then freed to view your document in “Two-Up” format. Then, you can let loose your inner annotator on one sheet while leaving its twin pristine next to it.
The result? Lawyers can prepare to depose witnesses with their notes always in front of them and effortlessly print the clean sheet for exhibits. In trial, attorneys can display the two-up document half on their own screen and half on the display screen. The attorney’s notes and questions are right where they’re wanted and the pristine version is always displayed to the Court and jury without having to juggle locations within multiple documents. Your workflow is greatly streamlined because you will no longer need to re-analyze documents, as your thoughts are always preserved on your half of the document. Teachers have their lesson notes in front of them at all times. Presenters can even use their PDFs in their speeches by quickly moving from showing the pristine document to the one with highlighted sections. Scientists who wish to crunch information from different angles can do so side-by-side.
And if you decide to print only the pristine pages or the annotated ones, just select the “Print Odd Pages Only” (or “Even Pages Only”) option when printing.
PDFShuffler lets you choose the trigger that is best for you. If you drag a document’s icon onto the PDFShuffler icon, you’ll see a new document appear in the same location as the original with the word “TWINNED” appended to the title. (Yes, you can choose your own preferred naming distinction.) If you want to Twin a bunch of documents, you can drag them all on to the icon at the same time. All of the PDFs will be twinned, and any non-PDFs will be left untouched. And if your preference is to work from the keyboard, just open the intended PDF from within PDFShuffler and voilà, your new document is ready for you to add value to it.
PDFShuffler isn’t for everybody, but if it sounds like it’s for you go check it out.
