On 03-Dec-04 Ian Douglas wrote:
Hi Folks,
I have been asked by a friend to print a book of his for Christmas. The book will have 40 A5 size pages. I have created a text file from his hand-written manuscript and now want to print about 5 copies to pass to friends for proof reading and suggestions.
My problem is that I would like to find a Linux Desk Top Publishing (or Word Processing) program into which I can import the text file and print it out on landscape orientation A4 sheets with the first sheet automatically having A5 page 40 on it's left half and A5 page 1 on it's right half, the second sheet having page 2 on it's left half and page 39 on it's right, the third sheet having page 38 on it's left and page 3 on it's right etc (those of you who have printed booklets will hopefully know the problem I am trying to explain)...
Have any ALUG members had any experience of printing books like this, and if so what DTP package did you use?
Ian.
Hi Ian, Before embarking on the actual printing I would (myself) style it up nicely using groff (and since it's for Christmas I'd try to style it up *very* nicely!). [Don't under-rate groff -- it's an excellent DTP tool]
The output from that phase would be a PostScript file, corresponding to A4 paper, one page (1-40) per page.
Stage 2 is to re-order the pages using psbook (see "man psbook").
Stage 3 is to put the successive re-ordered pages two to each single a4 page (landscape orientation now) using psnup with "-2".
If you get your options right with psbook and psnup you will have solved exactly the problem you have stated.