printing order for sections of a coptic binding
bj_...@yahoo.com
don't have the terminology down yet. i hope this isn't too
confusing. i'm wondering how i can get latex to order the pages of a
book such that they can be printed the way i'd like. for example,
i'll create a section by folding 4 sheets of paper in half and nesting
them together, then each section gets sewn in to the book.
so on the sheet that comes from the printer, pages 1 and 16 are on one
side, and pages 2 and 15 are on the other. and on the next sheet,
pages 3 and 14 are on side, and pages 4 and 13 are on another. the
next sheet has 5,12 and 6,11 and finally 7,10 and 8,9. then comes
the next section.
is this easy to do? from what i've learned of latex so far, i'm
guessing it's possible to do in such a way that if i decide to use 5
or 6 sheets of paper in each section instead of 4, that won't be much
of a problem. is that correct? also, how much more work will it be
to include things like a toc, introduction, or index?
i hope this all makes sense.
anon k
> first of all, i'm new to both latex and hand-binding, and i'm afraid i
> don't have the terminology down yet. i hope this isn't too
> confusing. i'm wondering how i can get latex to order the pages of a
> book such that they can be printed the way i'd like. for example,
> i'll create a section by folding 4 sheets of paper in half and nesting
> them together, then each section gets sewn in to the book.
You're ahead of the crowd by calling them sections (or gatherings), not
signatures.
Four sheets folded and nested is the 'format' called 'folio in fours'.
'Folio' is a sheet folded in half. Some people misuse 'folio' to mean
'leaf', but a folio has two leaves. A single leaf is a 'folium'.
The process of laying out formes for a sheet is called 'imposition'.
For a method, have a look at
http://www.cappella-archive.com/tinyfiles/tinymenu.html
For terminology, look for books on physical bibliography or ask a rare
books curator. The stuff on-line is generally amateurish.
> also, how much more work will it be
> to include things like a toc, introduction, or index?
In the old days you could leave the frontmatter (including TOC) until
last, and bind it in a section of its own. It was done this way partly
because pagination was determined at imposition, not composition.
Coptic binding accommodates late frontmatter easily if you start
stitching at the back of the book.
But, with LaTeX, the pagination is assigned at composition, not
imposition, so you know it early and it will cause you no extra work
unless you still want it to be in its own section.
LaTeX has a command for tables of contents: \tableofcontents
Making an index is a little more work.
http://web.image.ufl.edu/help/latex/latex_indexes.shtml
The main annoyance with automated imposition is that it becomes tricky
to allow for occasional sections with different numbers of leaves. If
you find that you need a section with three leaves at the end, for
example, you can do that by separating out those last five or six pages
using Acrobat, for separate imposition. In mass production they accept
some blank pages, or cut them out to throw away, but if you're doing a
one-off work on an expensive paper, it may make sense to impose more
frugally.
Peter Wilson
<bj_...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:9d3f8918-6b77-4c51...@a35g2000prf.googlegroups.com...
Try the booklet or the 2up package which are designed for the above
purpose.
Regarding your terminology. It seems that on one side of the Atlantic
the terms `gathering' or `section' are used where on the other side the term
`signature' is used, all representing the same idea. Robert Bringhurst (The
Elements of Typographic Style), Adrain Wilson (The Design of Books), the
Chicago Manual of Style, Aldren Watson (Hand Bookbinding) all use
`signature'. Arthur Johnson (The Thames & Hudson Manual of Book Binding),
Eric Burdett (The Craft of Bookbinding) use `section'. Josep Cambras (The
Complete Book of Bookbinding) uses `gathering' and `signtature'.
Peter W.
anon k
There is also a distinction between scholars and tradesmen that is being
missed here. Use 'signature' in place of 'section' or 'gathering' in
physical bibliography has led many a writer into absolute garbage. Many
an historian has been misled by not knowing the difference between and
impression, an issue and an edition, when attention to the collation
formula (which depends on distinguishing between sections and
signatures, and is often in library catalogs) would have easily saved
the day.
For hand bookbinders of today, the distinction could very reasonably
seem arbitrary. You have to work with reasonably antiquated books to
see why it matters, and that it can matter a great deal. It's a simple
fact that a single section can contain more than one signature.
Douglas Cockerell's "Bookbinding, and the Care of Books" distinguishes
between the two terms in the same way that I (and physical
bibliographers whom I know) do. This surprised me, for I had picked up
his book thinking it was written by a tradesman who would not
particularly care.
anon k
There is also a distinction between scholars and tradesmen that is being
missed here. Using 'signature' in place of 'section' or 'gathering' in
physical bibliography has led many a writer into absolute garbage. Many
an historian has been misled by not knowing the difference between
'impression', 'issue' and 'edition', when attention to the collation
formula (which depends on distinguishing between sections and
signatures, and is often in library catalogs) would have easily saved
the day. (It leads to miscounts when using the number of editions to
argue that a book must have been very saleable.)
For hand bookbinders of today, the distinction could very reasonably
seem arbitrary. You have to work with reasonably antiquated books to
encounter many places were it matters. It's a simple fact that a single
section can contain more than one signature.
Douglas Cockerell's "Bookbinding, and the Care of Books" distinguishes
between the two terms in the same way that I (and physical
bibliographers whom I know) do. I was pleasantly surprised by that, for
I had picked up his book thinking it was written by a tradesman who
would not be interested in ivory tower distinctions.
Don
> Douglas Cockerell's "Bookbinding, and the Care of Books" distinguishes
> between the two terms in the same way that I (and physical
> bibliographers whom I know) do. This surprised me, for I had picked up
> his book thinking it was written by a tradesman who would not
> particularly care.
Really? I'm an intense admirer of Cockerell and I don't recall the
distinction being made. Then, I'm much more a tradesmen than a
scholar on the subject, so perhaps that's why I didn't notice. Also,
Cockerell is an Englishman, if memory serves, so Mr. Wilson's point
would still be well taken.
The other tradesman's book I've found useful, Edith Diehl's two-volume
_Bookbinding: Its Background and Technique_, also iirc simply uses
"signature," as well.
I've read over the messages and I don't see where you've explained the
distinction you're positing between "signature" and "section." Would
you use "signature" for a single, properly folded sheet, and then
"section" for the group of signatures which will be sewn in?
As for the OP's question, I would echo Mr. Wilson's recommendation for
the booklet or 2up packages. You can also do some magic with psnup or
pdfpages, but I find the output to be overly shrunk, to the point of
being illegible, unless you've formatted your book planning for the
shrinkage in the first place. booklet has answered all my needs;
provided, however, that I've generally had to play around a good bit
with the setting to get the pages lined up properly. A small price to
pay for the superlative results.
Don (leaving work to look up "signature" and "section" in Cockerell
and Diehl)
anon k
> +AMDG
>
>> Douglas Cockerell's "Bookbinding, and the Care of Books" distinguishes
>> between the two terms in the same way that I (and physical
>> bibliographers whom I know) do. This surprised me, for I had picked up
>> his book thinking it was written by a tradesman who would not
>> particularly care.
>
> Really? I'm an intense admirer of Cockerell and I don't recall the
> distinction being made.
I have a copy of a fourth edition (1924) where a definition is given on
page 43 under "collating". But on page 34 he uses the word to mean the
printed sheet, even before folding. Then he says that a full set of
sheets for a book, in correct order, is "gathered". I like that extra
word to describe the sheets for a bookblock, especially since
bibliography doesn't seem to have a term for it.
> I've read over the messages and I don't see where you've explained the
> distinction you're positing between "signature" and "section." Would
> you use "signature" for a single, properly folded sheet, and then
> "section" for the group of signatures which will be sewn in?
Signatures (in this sense) are signed, i.e. marked with an indication of
where they go in the book. Sections are the physical bundles of pages.
In the other sense, the signature is the printed indication itself.
Why a difference? Because binders sometimes had to do things like cut
off the last leaf of signature V to insert after signature M, which
makes section M one leaf longer, and section V one leaf shorter. This
could be because the compositor missed a page, or made a mistake, or the
author (or editor or censor) required a change. If you detect it, it's
typically through differences in the paper plus a missing leaf
elsewhere. But sometimes the extra leaf is imposed on a half-sheet all
of its own so there isn't a missing one elsewhere.
Why signatures at all? Partly because page numbering was a relatively
late convention, and binders needed something to get pages into order.
When pagination did come along, it was done at the imposing stone and
often went wrong. The signatures prove to have been less prone to that,
perhaps because there are only two pages that need the change, as
opposed to e.g. eight or twelve.
A few bibliographic manuals say that the signatures are always correct
because binders depended on them, but I've seen a few counterexamples.
Binders have shown themselves capable of putting the impositors' errors
back in order. It doesn't affect us much today unless LaTeX were to
somehow get the pagination wrong.
If you were find yourself with a pile of sheets for hand-binding, I
think it'd be much quicker to check their order and orientation from
signatures than from page numbers. There is just so much less to have
to think about.
bj_...@yahoo.com
thanks to everyone for your help. the booklet package looks like,
with a little tweaking, it will do exactly what i want. and if anyone
cares, i looked to "bookbinding and the conservation of books: a
dictionary of descriptive terminology" by etherington and roberts
before i decided to say "section".
DB-W
<nos...@nul.nul> wrote:
> Don wrote:
> > +AMDG
<snipped>
I have recently spent four years intermittently printing a new edition of
James Ingram's "Memorials of Oxford" from the original three volumes of
1837. These were printed in 16 page unbound signatures, each one always
numbered from page 1 to 16.
The alphabetic sequence of the 'signature' distinguishes each section from
the next, bearing in mind that 'I' was invariably followed by 'K', 'J'
being omitted. The characters could be placed on the last page or the
first, depending how the sheet was intended to be picked up from the pile
for hand-folding, usually by female labour.
David B-W
anon k
Your post brings up one of my long-standing questions about how quality
control improved so much by the nineteenth century. I have never seen a
nineteenth century book plagued by wrong pagination, or by signatures
shuffled between the sections, but this could be simply because I
haven't looked at the right ones. With LaTeX the answer is that it's
all done in one go, and by a computer less prone to mistakes. But with
manual composition? I have not yet looked hard at how book-making
processes had changed by then. If your originals of Ingram have
revealed any secrets, I'd be interested to know of them. Apologies to
those who feel that I'm pushing things off-topic here, but I feel that
we're not yet completely beyond the motivations behind TeX and LaTeX.
DB-W
<nos...@nul.nul> wrote:
I think folio book binding methods could be of interest to TeX and LateX
enthusiasts. I use my PostScript Markup to code the text, which remains
permanently editable, into 4up pages tiled on an area twice the size of
the paper being used, so that pages 4:1 are at the bottom and 2:3 above.
The lower pages are printed with a 'front' command and a 'back' toggle
flips the pairs to print 2:3 on the reverse for the second printing pass.
If needed, nested sections of 16 pages are tiled to an area four times the
printing area and toggled with an additional 'inner' and 'outer' command.
I have done 32 pages, but the folds are too thick on 100 gm paper and
section 'creep' becomes a problem.
The PostScript for folio binding to avoid sectioning and collating is:
% TILING: toggle front/back for printing 4 page folios
/front {/tiledown {doprint} def /tileup {noprint} def} def
/back {/tiledown {noprint} def /tileup {doprint} def} def
/doprint {0 0 translate} def /noprint {0 pageheight translate} def
The beauty of this is that there is only one file for an entire book and,
as the text automatically flows from page to page, numbering as it goes,
there is no danger of dropping any text at page breaks.
The typeset file can be printed as 'neat' PS but I always distill into PDF
for faster printing, especially as in the Ingram there are 100 engravings
in each volume.
There is no collating or sectioning as the pages emerge from the Docuprint
in their correct order and are folded by a folding machine (20 seconds as
against 20 minutes by hand). A printed spinemark on the fold line rising
with the page number is a visual check against any misplacement.
The gathered folds are thermally bound twice, the second time to apply a
Jaconet open weave lining. I can stand on one half of the pages and pull
the others, but it is impossible to separate the two.
I appreciate that TeX can produce superb typesetting for both science and
the humanities. My main complaint (apart from the complexity of
formatting) is the infinitesimal juggling of the space between words that
makes the resulting typeset files uneditable.
(Notes)g(for)h(a)g(course)f(for)h(Maths)f(and)h(Ph)n(ysics)g
(undergraduates,)0 318 y
As my typesetting is done with a non-kerning Baskerville digitised on
letterpress principles I prefer:
4upA4 front % open a facing page format: first pass
/numbering {footers} def
10 rom 12 LG % 10 point roman on 12 point linespacing
(Notes for a course for Maths and Physics undergraduates.) J
close % prints the file
Apologies if straying OT; PSMarkup is "an ill-favoured thing, but mine own".
David B-W