Is there any software that would enable me, easily, to print a single pdf page over multiple A4 sheets?
For example I have a pdf file which conists of one page but when printed on one A4 sheet makes it very difficult to read because the font is so small. It would be better to be able to print it on perhaps 2 A4 sheets if printed portrait or 3 A4 sheets if printed landscape.
I haven't found a way to do this.
On Sat, 2007-12-15 at 17:03 +0000, Barry Samuels wrote:
Is there any software that would enable me, easily, to print a single pdf page over multiple A4 sheets?
Some ideas (none tested)
You can resize a PDF with mogrify which is part of imagemagick but I am not sure how the pixel size relates to page size (if at all)
Gimp can import PDF, but when resizing it it is going to treat the whole page as an image which may make fonts etc look a little funny
Convert the PDF to PS and then edit the markup to reflect a new page size ?
On Sat, Dec 15, 2007 at 05:03:01PM +0000, Barry Samuels wrote:
Is there any software that would enable me, easily, to print a single pdf page over multiple A4 sheets?
There is, it is written in java, I /think/ it was on sourceforge and it let me print a .pdf 4 to a page instead of just one and did lots of other magic tricks including what you want. If I could remember the name of the damn thing then I'd tell you, but I can't.... but at least you know it does exist ;)
Adam`
On Sat, Dec 15, 2007 at 07:13:09PM +0000, Adam Bower wrote:
On Sat, Dec 15, 2007 at 05:03:01PM +0000, Barry Samuels wrote:
Is there any software that would enable me, easily, to print a single pdf page over multiple A4 sheets?
There is, it is written in java, I /think/ it was on sourceforge and it let me print a .pdf 4 to a page instead of just one and did lots of other magic tricks including what you want. If I could remember the name of the damn thing then I'd tell you, but I can't.... but at least you know it does exist ;)
pdftk, http://www.accesspdf.com/pdftk
It is, of course, in Debian.
J.
On Sat, 2007-12-15 at 17:03 +0000, Barry Samuels wrote:
Is there any software that would enable me, easily, to print a single pdf page over multiple A4 sheets?
For example I have a pdf file which conists of one page but when printed on one A4 sheet makes it very difficult to read because the font is so small. It would be better to be able to print it on perhaps 2 A4 sheets if printed portrait or 3 A4 sheets if printed landscape.
http://freshmeat.net/projects/mpage/
The script I used to use (haven't printed lot's of pages at home for a long time) is:
PAGES=2 rm -f /tmp/unmangled.ps rm -f /tmp/next.ps rm -f /tmp/$PAGES.pages.ps mpage -$PAGES "$1" >/tmp/$PAGES.pages.ps ps2pdf -r600 -dPDFSETTINGS=/prepress /tmp/$PAGES.pages.ps
Where $1 was a 1-per-page postscript of the original document (PDF in your case).
Adam
Barry Samuels bjsamuels@beenthere-donethat.org.uk wrote:
Is there any software that would enable me, easily, to print a single pdf page over multiple A4 sheets?
I pdf2ps it and then use psnup -2 from the psutils package. For some reason, using pdf2ps and psnup in a pipe doesn't work - I have to use the (sometimes large) intermediate ps file.
Hope that helps,
On 15-Dec-07 22:00:31, MJ Ray wrote:
Barry Samuels bjsamuels@beenthere-donethat.org.uk wrote:
Is there any software that would enable me, easily, to print a single pdf page over multiple A4 sheets?
I pdf2ps it and then use psnup -2 from the psutils package. For some reason, using pdf2ps and psnup in a pipe doesn't work - I have to use the (sometimes large) intermediate ps file.
Hope that helps,
Isn't that the opposite way round from what he wants (namely, enlarge a single PDF/PS page to twice the size, or rather sqrt(2), and print each half on two separate sheets)?
psnup -2 will shrink the size by sqrt(2), and print two pages side by side on the same sheet.
(Adam Allen's ecript looks interesting, though -- I'll have to have a look at that!)
Best wishes, Ted.
-------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) Ted.Harding@manchester.ac.uk Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 15-Dec-07 Time: 23:41:11 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------
(Ted Harding) Ted.Harding@manchester.ac.uk wrote:
On 15-Dec-07 22:00:31, MJ Ray wrote:
Barry Samuels bjsamuels@beenthere-donethat.org.uk wrote:
Is there any software that would enable me, easily, to print a single pdf page over multiple A4 sheets?
I pdf2ps it and then use psnup -2 from the psutils package. For some reason, using pdf2ps and psnup in a pipe doesn't work - I have to use the (sometimes large) intermediate ps file.
Isn't that the opposite way round from what he wants (namely, enlarge a single PDF/PS page to twice the size, or rather sqrt(2), and print each half on two separate sheets)?
Yep, sorry. I've done the opposite too, using pstops (also from psutils) to expand one PDF poster over 4 A4 sheets with a bit of overlap (other tricks I tried didn't allow overlap and my laser won't print to the very edge), then stuck them onto A2 board.
Hope that helps,
Thank you to all that replied.
I was hoping for a GUI solution rather than command line.
I did try Adobe Reader 8 under Debian and although it is possible to print the actual view, rather than the whole page, when I tried that it printed the portion in view but at the same scale required to get the whole document on the page - much too small.
I did then think to try Adobe Reader 8 on Windows XP which was supplied with my laptop but seldom used. That printed the selected view at the correct (larger scale). So is the problem in Debian a printer driver thing (Postscript) or an Adobe problem?
I do have a similar problem if I try to print a page from a web browser. The page prints but as a ridiculously small image in the corner of an A4 sheet. All other applications print as I expect.
On Sun, 2007-12-16 at 09:42 +0000, MJ Ray wrote:
Yep, sorry. I've done the opposite too, using pstops (also from psutils) to expand one PDF poster over 4 A4 sheets with a bit of overlap (other tricks I tried didn't allow overlap and my laser won't print to the very edge), then stuck them onto A2 board.
At least it wasn't just me that got it wrong ;-)
The quick look in the mpage manual doesnt give a "-0.5 page to 1" option.
Adam
Hi
I posted this off-list by accident, so posting again, to the list. My apologies...
On 15/12/2007, Barry Samuels bjsamuels@beenthere-donethat.org.uk wrote:
Is there any software that would enable me, easily, to print a single pdf page over multiple A4 sheets?
Have you tried 'poster' [1]? It's a small utility that ends up being a CUPS filter, AFAIK. I've used it to print pictures so that the picture spans multiple A4 pages. Can't see why it won't be possible to pass it arbitrary print data to posterise.
Srdjan
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Adam Bower -
Barry Samuels -
Jonathan McDowell -
MJ Ray -
Mr. Adam ALLEN -
Srdjan Todorovic -
Ted.Harding＠manchester.ac.uk -
Wayne Stallwood