[SOLVED] PDF print of booklets

business_kid · 02-15-2013, 03:18 AM

I get 4 page (and occasionally larger) pdfs with the pages numerically arranged and would like to be able to print them 2 up in the following manner.

page 1(left) opposite page 4(right)
page 2 behind page 1 and page 3 behind page 4

Any ideas? I have slackware-14.0. They are primarily text, but have some pictures.

jv2112 · 02-15-2013, 04:49 AM

I am not familiar with Slackware repositories but there are programs out their that do what you want. Arch has a few.

Code:

yaourt -Ss pdf booklet
aur/booklet 1.0-1 (6)
    Converts a pdf to a booklet
aur/livret 0.2-2 (1)
    Booklet is a small freeware program written in Java for creating small 
    books from a PDF document. Drops from a source PDF file containing two 
    files the fronts and backs ready to be printed and stapled.
aur/pdf2book 1-3 (5)
    Rearranges the pages in a PDF to be printed as a book (or booklet). Print 
    double-sided in \"short-edge\" mode.
aur/print-booklet-git 20111104-2 (2)
    Print booklets from pdf and postscript files.

business_kid · 02-16-2013, 03:43 AM

Thanks for the reply. So it's all done separate to other programs. I thought someone was going to tell me how to tweak the print setup of something like Adobe Acrobloat or Okular.

i took a look to see what slackware had installed - it had pdfseparate and pdfunite
For a 4 page, the deal was
pdfseparate file%d = file1, file2, file3 $ file4
pdfunite 1&4 front
pdfunite 2&3 back
lp -o landscape -o number-up=2 front
lp -o landscape -o number-up=2 back
These lend themselves to a script, which it is presumed all slackware users can knock up before breakfast :-/. But pdfunite firmly refused to accept any filenames. You have given me some useful search terms, and I'll run those down. I like the sound of pdf2book - seems like there's a console jockey behind that one somewhere.

jv2112 · 02-16-2013, 07:16 AM

Plenty of ways to skin a cat. You could also place it in a function in your ~user/.bashrc file.

business_kid · 02-16-2013, 08:15 AM

I took a look at some of those. Webpage in arabic:-/. Then I found I didn't need to.

This makes 2 at a time.
pdf2ps file.pdf file.ps # Theoretically unnecessary as psbook handles pdf also
psbook -s4 file.ps booklet.ps
ps2pdf booklet.ps booklet.pdf # Purely to humour dodgy print utilities.
lp -o landscape -o number-up=2 booklet.ps # prints 4,1 on 1st booklet and 2,3 on second
turn pages over
lp -o landscape -o number-up=2 booklet.ps # prints 2,3 on 1st booklet and 4,1 on second

lp simply ignores it's own -P<pages> option in this setup.

business_kid · 02-17-2013, 12:11 PM

Epilogue:

Found I was getting a lot of $@#£&! from the print area due to too many suspends and resumes. A reboot sorted some messing. The pdf2ps and ps2pdf are unnecessary as psbook handles pdfs

psbook -s4 some.pdf booklet.pdf should be ok.