Pdfshuffler is about to disappear

[Mélodie]

I thought I would be seeking how to report a bug I found in Bionic related to this package many weeks ago already, but seeking for answers on different IRC chans I have been explained that pdfshuffler will soon no longer be in the Debian repositories:

https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/pdfshuffler and as many here know, usually it means *disappearance* for the program in the Ubuntu repositories as well at some point in the future.

Also, where are we with PDF-Shuffler upstream? Well, it has *not been updated* since *2012*, which is a long time:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfshuffler/

even the forum of the project does not get answers, as far as I can see:
https://sourceforge.net/p/pdfshuffler/discussion/850968/thread/57de223096/?limit=25#44c8

While a program is about to disappear, others might be existing to be a good replacement ? Well no, at least floss and from what are available in the repositories, what I have tested so far do not compare to pdfshuffler.

I tried pdfchain : it's unable to open one single pdf from a right click. I tried pdfmod : it's unable to open more than one pdf at a time in the same window.

I don't want pdfsam, as it means using Java, which I tend to avoid in the purpose of keeping it light in the system as much as possible (and I don't like what it looks like in Linux distributions).

I don't want old tk UI either, it's not sexy.

My point is: *I want here to alert* on a very good program which is in danger of being abandonned, and that appearantly no one suspects of being so good at what it does that it deserves a future.

The main features and advantages:
PDF-Shuffler can open several pdfs at same time and place them in the order you open them, be it with the graphical selection or from a console;
It allows you to rotate sheets individually inside it's window and of course it performs all the split and merge things, and change order of files as needed.

It has success and is widely used and appreciated, else no one would report bugs against it, but people do:
https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/pdfshuffler/+bugs

and from the content of the bug reports, we can guess some improvements could be brought to this program which already does a great job.

Thanks for considering to give PDF-Shuffler a future!

Best regards,
Mélodie

[Tom Reynolds (tomreyn)]

As discussed on IRC:
A package being dropped as unsupportable isn't really a functional bug (which you'd file a bug report on). According to https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=917831 'pdfshuffler' is going to be replaced by an actively maintained fork, 'pdfarranger', in Debian. This also applies to Ubuntu 'disco' (will be 19.04), where 'pdfshuffler' is now a transitional package depending on newly introduced 'pdfarranger' package (which depends on current / supportable python libraries).