On Friday 22 June 2007 19:10, John Jason Jordan wrote: > In the past I would do this with an InDesign script on Windows. I > could still do so, but I'm trying to learn how to do things without > Microsoft or Adobe. > > I am about to receive a 200-page PDF file (a book) from a > customer. The output will be to laser. The format will be > half-letter, that is, 5.5 inches wide by 8.5 inches high. The PDF > file will be in this format. Since it will be printed on 8.5 x 11 > paper landscape, I need to place each page of the PDF twice on each > side. That is, the first sheet will have page 1 twice on one side > and page 2 twice on the back. The second sheet will have page 3 > twice on one side and page 4 twice on the back -- and so on. The > books will be printed collated so each copy coming out of the laser > is really two copies of the book. Before binding the stacks are cut > in two with the guillotine. > > I have Scribus 1.3.3.8 on Ubuntu Feisty amd64. It runs just fine, > but I don't think it can place PDF files one page at a time. Others > have mentioned to me ps2pdf, but it's command line and the syntax > to do an imposition is impossible to figure out.
If you are running any version of linux and don't use the command line then you are hopping on one leg. The command line is just typing text into a console window. Granted it is easier to do imposition upront in the Context version of TeX but with psutils and the like anything is possible. There are horses for courses. Scribus is not the tool I would use for this imposition problem, since the file is already in finished (pdf) form. Your Ubuntu system is really a Linux system whch means that tasks like yours are done with a sequence of utilities in classic Unix fashion. First, I take it your goal is to create a book with 5.5 x 8.5 inch page size using an ordinary laser printer and 8.5 x 11 paper. You need to take a slightly different approach, printing one book at a time and not two. Assume that the pdf file is named book.pdf. First you convert the pdf pages to Postscript using e.g. pdftops: pdftops book.pdf The working file is named book.ps at this point. Next you run the command psbook as follows; psbook -s4 book.ps bookb.ps Now you have the book file (bookb.ps) in 4 page signatures. The order is 4 1 2 3 for the first signature. Next you need to set up these sheets for printing. You use the command psnup -2 -pletter -Pfolio bookb.ps bookc.ps You have just told the program to set two pages per sheet, the sheet size is letter and the input page size is half letter (folio.) The output is called bookc.ps If the laser will duplex then you can print, fold and bind from file bookc.ps. The job is finished. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ If the laser (like mine) won't duplex then you have to print in two passes. You need to select the evens from the odds. this takes two runs of the command psselect: psselect -o bookc.ps booko.ps psselect -e -r bookc.ps booke.ps My laser auxiliary feed selects from the top with printing side up, and stacks printing side down. Therefore I have to reverse the page order (-r) on the evens. From tray 1 the -r is not needed. Depending on the selection process of your laser you may need to reverse none, one, or both selections with the -r parameter. In any case once the pages are printed both sides then you fold and bind as before. I would experiment with e.g. an 8 page file until I got the sequence right for your particular printer. Incidentally a digital printing press follows a very similar procedure to the above using two up printing double sided. That is why books submitted to a POD printer need to have page counts that are in signatures (multiples) of four. I do a similar procedure each weekend, using two scripts, one to set up the file and another to print each booklet. I am imposing letter onto tabloid, and saddle stitching the sheets. Since I do the same procedure over and over again each week using different input files I use the $1 parameter substitution technique in my Linux script. Here are the actual scripts I use: ---------------------------------------------------script1a--------------- psbook $1.ps $1b.ps echo 'psnup' psnup -2 -ptabloid -Pletter $1b.ps $1p.ps echo 'psselect' psselect -o $1p.ps $1o.ps psselect -e -r $1p.ps $1e.ps -------------------------------------------------script1b--------------- lpr $1o.ps echo 'switch paper' read x lpr $1e.ps ------------------------------------------------ I call these scripts with just the name of the file and not the suffix, e.g., scripta mybook once and scriptb mybook for each copy needed. I staple using a long stapler and fold each booklet by hand using a folding bone. You would fold each page and then bind the stack using (I presume) glue. If you want to guillotine the folded edges you can but the folded stack will glue better. Your proposed method of two copies of the book to be printed at once side by side is a bit of an aberration for a local laser. The above is an easier method using an ordinary laser printer and standard Unix/Linux utilities. You don't need a guillotine but a folding machine would be handy. Maybe a local printer or copy shop would let you use their folding machine for a fee. The utilities I use, psbook. psnup, and psselect are in the free package PSUtils. You can download it if you don't already have it on your Ubuntu system. HTH -- John Culleton ATTN Publishers/authors: If you don't read you don't succeed. Free short list of publishing/marketing books. http://wexfordpress.com/tex/shortlist.pdf
