Hi.
On Friday 03 Dec 2004 14:25, Ian Douglas wrote:
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?
KDEPrint includes 'Print pamphlet' filters which means you can turn anything you can print through KDE into a booklet (the printing term for this is 'imposition', btw).
Just print from your DTP / WP app through KDE print (the command is 'kprinter' if you're using an app that uses a different printing system by default but lets you specify your own print command, eg. xpdf, Firefox).
Then select 'Properties', click the 'Filters' tab, click the 'Add filter' icon (which looks like a funnel), and select a 'Pamphlet printing' filter. You can either do it in one pass if you've got a duplex printer, otherwise you'll have to do the even pages, re-insert your printed pages the other way round, and then print the odd pages on the backs.
Incidentally, the filter turns out to be using the following command:
psbook %filterinput | psnup -2 -p%psl | psselect -e %filteroutput
which is pretty much what other people here have suggested doing. Hopefully this is a slightly friendlier interface to all of that.
Hm, can anyone suggest a way of adjusting for 'creep' (ie. moving the margins inwards for the inner pages)?
If your friend's book's just simple text, OpenOffice Writer would probably be fine for laying out. If it's more complex then you might want to try Scribus. IMO it's not quite the Quark killer some have suggested, but it does most of what's required and doesn't crash nearly as often as it used to.
HTH,
Joe x