[pdftex] splitting .pdf output into smaller parts

[Andreas Matthias]

Reinhard Kotucha <reinhard at kammer.uni-hannover.de> wrote:

[pdfpages.sty]

> Is it possible to extract the code that parses the optional argument
> "pages" i.e something like {1,2,5,20-30,89} and put it into a separate
> package?

I don't think it is worth doing this. The macros parsing those
page lists are closely linked to the needs of pdfpages. E.g.
I have introduced a new command which merges several pdf docs:
\includepdfmerge{doc1.pdf,3,5-7,doc2.pdf,7,doc3.pdf,doc4.pdf}
Thus the macros are designed to parse those lists as well, not
just lists containing only numbers.
 
> What I think about is to have something like ifthen.sty which checks
> whether a number is in a list (i.e. {1,2,5,20-30,89}) or not.

As a starting point on how to parse such a list of numbers, take
a look at Heiko's pagesel.sty. This is where I started. :-)
If you have understood the parsing, it shouldn't be too difficult
to add some kind of checking.

Regards
Andreas