Printing a booklet from a pdf file...
Steven J Green
I've just bought a very nice new Olympus camera from Photodesk (thanks,
Chris!). It didn't come with a printed manual, but instead a CDROM with a
pdf file, 208 pages long... Printed out on A4, this is too big to lug
around!
The best way for me to print this out would be on A5 paper, double sided, 2
pages per side. Printing this is straightforward if one prints 1 & 2, 3 & 4
etc. BUT - what's the easiest way to lay out and print the pages so that,
folded in the middle, I get an A6 size booklet with the pages in the right
sequence?
I have Impression Pub, OPro and Easiwriter, and RiScriptPro. I'm familiar
with Imp Pub, a total newbie with the others. Obviously I could set up an
ImpPub A5 page with 2 frames, and then copy each page into the right
sequence. But is there a quicker and easier way to do this in any of the
programs?
All suggestions gratefully received!
Steve
Matthew Somerville
Steven J Green <steve...@clara.net> wrote:
[ pamphlet printing a 208 page document ]
> The best way for me to print this out would be on A5 paper, double sided, 2
> pages per side. Printing this is straightforward if one prints 1 & 2, 3 & 4
> etc. BUT - what's the easiest way to lay out and print the pages so that,
> folded in the middle, I get an A6 size booklet with the pages in the right
> sequence?
This will be of no use to you, but DVIView (a program for showing/printing
TeX converted files) lets you do not only two-up pamphlet printing but
four-up printing, which let me print the Inform Designer's Manual as a cute
little A6 book instead of a hefty A4 tome.
> I have Impression Pub, OPro and Easiwriter, and RiScriptPro.
I'm sure one of these must be able to do pamphlet printing, seeing as DVIView
is over five years old... Also, Wordz by Colton Software could do two-up
printing.
ATB,
Matthew
--
Xander: I laugh in the face of danger. Then I hide until it goes away.
morgan
<URL:mailto:steve...@clara.net> wrote:
> what's the easiest way to lay out and print the pages so that,
> folded in the middle, I get an A6 size booklet with the pages in the right
> sequence?
>
> I have Impression Pub, OPro and Easiwriter, and RiScriptPro.
I once had to do this (fortunately only a small pamphlet - sort of
newsletter-cum-christmas card with four pages to each A4 sheet) with no
DTP software at all, just !PipeDream 4.5, !Paint and !Draw, and (praise
be!) St Pilling's !Sprinter. Here's what I did (and hope never to have
to do again, but it worked):
1. Composed the text in !PipeDream, with the appropriate fonts, margins etc
(and even a few small embedded line drawings) and saved each page to a
separate file. (All the sizing was done at this stage, because sprites
don't scale well.)
2. "Printed" each page to a separate sprite file using !Sprinter.
3. Worked out (on a bit of paper) the page sequence for the quartet of
pages on each sheet (including the ones that would have to be printed
upside-down) and then dragged each quartet of sprites into a !Draw window,
added page numbers, rotated the bits that needed rotating and lined
everything up, then saved each block of four pages as a separate drawfile.
4. Worked out (on another bit of paper) which blocks of four would be
printed back-to-back, then printed the whole thing out from the drawfiles.
Took ages, but gave me a lot of job satisfaction :)
I don't think you'd want to do this with a 200-page manual, but you
might like to consider that:
a. RiScript Pro can batch-export PDFs as (rather good, though complex)
drawfiles;
b. drawfiles are highly editable - my experience with manuals is that you
can often shrink text & diagrams, omit white space and, very often, strip
out redundant text (all the foreign-language stuff, copyright notices,
warnings not to feed live components to domestic animals etc etc) to produce
a printout 20% the size of the original: if it's for your own use, you can
customize, add notes etc as you go along, and you don't have to worry too
much about getting a "professional" look to it all.
In book printing, by the way, pages are set up in "signatures" of 4 (quarto),
8 (octavo), 16 (16mo) or even 32 pages per double-sided sheet. Each sheet is
folded the appropriate number of times, and the resulting (uncut)
signatures are then placed in the correct sequence and sewn/glued together.
Trimming the edges (with e.g. a guillotine) comes _last_. To work out your
page sequence for quarto (four pages per sheet)
1. Decide how many pages you will have overall: this is best done after
any editing work.
2. Divide total pages by 4: that will give the number of sheets. If
there is a remainder, pad out the last with blank pages (unless you have
chapters and need to add blank pages anyway to get new chapters starting
on a right-hand page...)
3. Within each sheet you will only need to permutate 4 pages, and since
you are only going to make one fold per sheet, you won't need to print
anything upside down. The sequence of each (landscape) sheet will be:
SIDE A page 2 | page 3 SIDE B page 4 | page 1
and so on:
page 6 | page 7 page 8 | page 5
10 | 11 12 9
If you use 4-page "signatures" like this, and fold each sheet very
carefully, then arrange the folded sheets in the correct sequence
(1-4), (5-8), (9-12) etc, you can bind them together without any
cutting, with nice neat edges, and you won't have a nasty bulge at
the binding edge. For binding you could use staples, or sew it with
thread, or punch holes for a filofax, or use one of those wire-binder
machines beloved of MBA students...
mog
--
Rob Sinclair
> I've just bought a very nice new Olympus camera from Photodesk (thanks,
> Chris!). It didn't come with a printed manual, but instead a CDROM with a
> pdf file, 208 pages long... Printed out on A4, this is too big to lug
> around!
> The best way for me to print this out would be on A5 paper, double sided, 2
> pages per side. Printing this is straightforward if one prints 1 & 2, 3 & 4
> etc. BUT - what's the easiest way to lay out and print the pages so that,
> folded in the middle, I get an A6 size booklet with the pages in the right
> sequence?
The latest version 0.92.1.03 of !PDF by Colin Granville
http://www.pdf.iconbar.com
will print booklet (pamphlet) mode directly from the pdf file. I've used it
to make an A5 booklet from A4 pdf (printed on A4) - don't know if it can be
set up to do A6 on A5 paper but it would be worth a try. Your 208 A4 pages
would fit on 52 A4 sheets as an A5 booklet, which should be luggable (and
readable)
Just one thing to note if you do this - when it asks you to turn the paper
over, you also need to rotate it (other pamplet printing modes, e.g.
TechWriter and Ovation Pro don't require the paper to be rotated, just turned
over end for end)
Hope this helps
Rob
--
Rob Sinclair
Sherwood Solutions
PO Box 5559, Papanui, Christchurch, New Zealand
Tel +64-3-351 6603 Fax +64-3-351 5886
Colin Granville
>In article <4aaa908f53...@clara.net>,
> Steven J Green <steve...@clara.net> wrote:
>> Greetings...
>
>> I've just bought a very nice new Olympus camera from Photodesk (thanks,
>> Chris!). It didn't come with a printed manual, but instead a CDROM with a
>> pdf file, 208 pages long... Printed out on A4, this is too big to lug
>> around!
>
>> The best way for me to print this out would be on A5 paper, double sided, 2
>> pages per side. Printing this is straightforward if one prints 1 & 2, 3 & 4
>> etc. BUT - what's the easiest way to lay out and print the pages so that,
>> folded in the middle, I get an A6 size booklet with the pages in the right
>> sequence?
>
>The latest version 0.92.1.03 of !PDF by Colin Granville
>http://www.pdf.iconbar.com
>will print booklet (pamphlet) mode directly from the pdf file. I've used it
>to make an A5 booklet from A4 pdf (printed on A4) - don't know if it can be
>set up to do A6 on A5 paper but it would be worth a try. Your 208 A4 pages
>would fit on 52 A4 sheets as an A5 booklet, which should be luggable (and
>readable)
>
You won't be able to make a 208 page pamphlet because you won't be
able to fold it in half. The maximum you can get away with is about
64 pages (16 sheets of paper). So you will have to split it into 4.
I would split the sections to the nearest chapter so that each is
self contained.
If the output from !PDF is good enough for you, !PDF will let you
specify a range of pages from the whole document that you want to
make a pamphlet from. So for example you could just make a pamplet
of Chapter 3. You may need to alter the print setup in !PDF to suit
your printer. If you need any held drop me an email.
>
>Just one thing to note if you do this - when it asks you to turn the paper
>over, you also need to rotate it (other pamplet printing modes, e.g.
>TechWriter and Ovation Pro don't require the paper to be rotated, just turned
>over end for end)
Ah.. but how you turn the paper in them depends on whether you print
pamphlet or double sided, in !PDF you always turn the paper the
same way. How you turn the paper is also printer dependant.
--
Colin
Theo Markettos
>
> This will be of no use to you, but DVIView (a program for showing/printing
> TeX converted files) lets you do not only two-up pamphlet printing but
> four-up printing, which let me print the Inform Designer's Manual as a cute
> little A6 book instead of a hefty A4 tome.
Also probably little use to you, but psutils (RISC OS port from the same
source as ghostscript) will allow you to do all sorts of page rearranging
with PostScript files - in particular psbook is designed for arranging pages
into books or booklet for, and psnup for putting multiple pages on one page.
You could probably convert to ps with ghostscript, run through psbook and
then rerender as ps/pdf/printer output format with gs again.
I did this for a series (about 600) of scanned handwritten pages in pdf
format, printing 4 A4 sides to each double sided A4 side. Then converted
them to pdf and printed from Acrobat on the PC next to the printer, turning
the paper over as appropriate. This saved an awful lot of paper :-)
Theo
John Evans
> 2
> pages per side. Printing this is straightforward if one prints 1 & 2, 3 &
> 4
> etc. BUT - what's the easiest way to lay out and print the pages so that,
> folded in the middle, I get an A6 size booklet with the pages in the right
> sequence?
Using Impression you can do this on A4 paper - Set the paper size to A6
(Portrait or Landscape) - then when printing go to SETUP in the main print
menu and click on '4 up'. In the main print menu click on 'Print Lots' and
to Landscape or Portrait.
This assumes that the original PDF file has one page per paper side and is
A6. You can use scaling to change the effective paper size - but if you
have two pages/sheet on the original you are in for a lot of editing!!
You can then print one side of the paper - turn the whole lot round and
print the other side. Impression will sort out the pages. If you have a
Duplex printer with PCL 2->5 you can use Mijas Software LJDuplex (my plug!!)
to print on both sides automatically.
In Ovation you can print 2up in a similar way (ie A6 on A5) but havn't tried
4up yet.
If you want to use Ovation and a Postscript printer, mail me - it is easy
but takes too long to describe here.
John
--
John (Hampshire UK) joh...@argonet.co.uk
Steven J Green
<snip description of problem>
thanks very much to all who replied with most helpful suggestions!
Steve
Terry Duell
Steven J Green <steve...@clara.net> wrote:
> Greetings...
>
> I've just bought a very nice new Olympus camera from Photodesk (thanks,
> Chris!). It didn't come with a printed manual, but instead a CDROM with a
> pdf file, 208 pages long... Printed out on A4, this is too big to lug
> around!
>
> The best way for me to print this out would be on A5 paper, double sided, 2
> pages per side. Printing this is straightforward if one prints 1 & 2, 3 & 4
> etc. BUT - what's the easiest way to lay out and print the pages so that,
> folded in the middle, I get an A6 size booklet with the pages in the right
> sequence?
[snip]
My advice is t use the new version of !pdf as this allows you to not only
print double sided as a pamphlet but to print it sections (ie pages 1-10,
then 11-20 as separate pamphlets) which is a help if the doc has lots of
pages.
You might need to carefully read the destructions beforehand and do some
tests to be sure that you have the printing setup correct, but it does work
very nicely.
Cheers,
--
Regards,
Terry Duell
Hedley Hunnisett
> what's the easiest way to lay out and print the pages so that, folded
> in the middle, I get an A6 size booklet with the pages in the right
> sequence?
> I have Impression Pub,
No problem then. :-)
I regularly produce an A5 booklet (yes, I know you want A6) from a
multi-page A4 document. The routine for printing is:
Scale: 66%
Fit Lots
Sideways
Then on Setup...
Select Pamphlet, Two
Ignore page border
Centre pages (probably already selected)
OK
It will automatically print all one side of the pages, then tell
you to turn over the paper and it will print the second side.
Depending on your printer, you may need to reverse the order of the
sheets for the second side. If the nuber of pages is not a multiple
of four, the empty pages will be at the end, so will be on the first
sheet printed - don't assume it's all gone pear-shaped! :-)
The same system should work fine if your original page size is A5
and you want to reduce to A6. Presumably you will have to cut up
the paper to A5 size first. I haven't tried it myself, but can't
see why it shouldn't work in exactly the same way.
Biggest I have done in one, was 112 pages. I did a 280 page book
in nine sections, then had it professionally bound.
--
Hedley Hunnisett of Wigston Magna, Leicestershire.
Using British RISC technology with StrongARM power!