Tool to produce A5 booklet from A4 pages PS / PDF
In order NOT to try to reinvent the wheel, I'd like to ask if anyone knows a tool that does helps to produce a printable and foldable booklet from A4 pages. I'm searching for a tool that scales down and reorders A4 pages (from a document, usually PS or PDF) in a way that the result can be printed with a duplex printer (content on both sides of the paper sheet) and then be folded in the middle in order to get a book (or let's better call it a booklet) in A5 format. Additionally, the booklet can be stapled where it has been folded (using the proper mechanical tool). Of course, this just seems useful for standard A paper formats (A4 / A5) which keep the aspect ratio sqrt(2) (or nearly 1.414:1) even after folding or combining: A4 +--++--+ | || | | A5 || A5 | | || | +--++--+ Illustration here: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8a/A_size_illustration.svg Depending on the real page number, it would require to completely re-order and rotate (90 or 270 degree) the contained pages, depending where they will appear on the result paper. For example, page 1 needs to be placed on page 1, top, rotated 270 degrees, while the lase page also has to be placed on page 1, bottom, rotated 270 degrees. Page 2 will be on page 2 (which is the rear side of page 1), top, rotated 90 degrees... and now my imaginary force is failing. :-) All pages have to be scaled down to 50% of their original size, of course. In ideal case, the number of pages to be processed this way is modulo 4, because 4 pages go to one sheet (two per side). So basically, I'm searching for a program that does the renumbering and rotation magic, provided PS or PDF files as input, and also as output. What tool can you suggest to do so? Sidenote: Since my system crashed in July 2008, I can't access my home directory anymore (inode missing, content still on disk). I wrote a program that does all this for image files as input - creates a LaTeX document that includes the properly rotated and scaled images so you can print from a stack of images and result in a happy little booklet - jpg2tex, pdflatex, lpr. I don't want to do this again... :-( -- Polytropon Magdeburg, Germany Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0 Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ... ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Tool to produce A5 booklet from A4 pages PS / PDF
On 2010-04-02 02:27, Polytropon wrote: In order NOT to try to reinvent the wheel, I'd like to ask if anyone knows a tool that does helps to produce a printable and foldable booklet from A4 pages. I'm searching for a tool that scales down and reorders A4 pages (from a document, usually PS or PDF) in a way that the result can be printed with a duplex printer (content on both sides of the paper sheet) and then be folded in the middle in order to get a book (or let's better call it a booklet) in A5 format. Additionally, the booklet can be stapled where it has been folded (using the proper mechanical tool). Of course, this just seems useful for standard A paper formats (A4 / A5) which keep the aspect ratio sqrt(2) (or nearly 1.414:1) even after folding or combining: A4 +--++--+ | || | | A5 || A5 | | || | +--++--+ Illustration here: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8a/A_size_illustration.svg Depending on the real page number, it would require to completely re-order and rotate (90 or 270 degree) the contained pages, depending where they will appear on the result paper. For example, page 1 needs to be placed on page 1, top, rotated 270 degrees, while the lase page also has to be placed on page 1, bottom, rotated 270 degrees. Page 2 will be on page 2 (which is the rear side of page 1), top, rotated 90 degrees... and now my imaginary force is failing. :-) All pages have to be scaled down to 50% of their original size, of course. In ideal case, the number of pages to be processed this way is modulo 4, because 4 pages go to one sheet (two per side). So basically, I'm searching for a program that does the renumbering and rotation magic, provided PS or PDF files as input, and also as output. What tool can you suggest to do so? print/psutils-a4 has tools to do the job for you. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Tool to produce A5 booklet from A4 pages PS / PDF
On Thu, Apr 1, 2010 at 8:27 PM, Polytropon free...@edvax.de wrote: In order NOT to try to reinvent the wheel, I'd like to ask if anyone knows a tool that does helps to produce a printable and foldable booklet from A4 pages. I'm searching for a tool that scales down and reorders A4 pages (from a document, usually PS or PDF) in a way that the result can be printed with a duplex printer (content on both sides of the paper sheet) and then be folded in the middle in order to get a book (or let's better call it a booklet) in A5 format. Additionally, the booklet can be stapled where it has been folded (using the proper mechanical tool). [...] Several of the things you mention can be done with pdftk, other dunno but maybe. PS is much easier to hack than PDF IMHO, scaling and stuff can be done with any text editor includiong sed, juts by hacking the preamble but once in pdf I usually use pdftk ;-) /usr/ports/print/pdftk Cheers, Alejandro Imass -- Polytropon Magdeburg, Germany Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0 Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ... ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
