On 01/04/12 14:10, Martin C. wrote:
On Sun, 01 Apr 2012 06:17:26 -0500, HeyBub wrote:

We routinely print a 32-page "Getting Started" guide for our software, 8
sheets of paper, 4 pages to a sheet front and back. The pages are
"saddle stitched", which means a single staple fastens the whole shebang
together. This results in the edges away from the staple are staggered.

That unsightliness is fixed by trimming the booklet to 5.25" with a
suitable paper cutter

What do you use to perform the booklet imposition?
a) Do you use Fineprint on Windows?
b) Do you use fprint or fp on Linux?
c) Or do you impose the pages manually as shown below?
[snip]

I do this with PDFs generated by LaTeX, in two stages:

1) I do some measurements on the paper thickness, so I can set an
adjustment so that the textarea in a 32pp signature gradually moves back
towards the spine for pp1-16 and then back towards the foredge for
pp17-32. This compensates for the offset caused by the folding.

2) Having typeset the PDF, I use a shell script something like the one
below to create the signatures. pstops is your essential friend he it
rearranges the order and orientation of pages in a Postscript file.

# get the number of pages output
PP=`grep "Output written on $DOC.pdf" $DOC.log | awk '{print $5}' | tr
-d '('`
# set the size of a signature
SIG=32
# how many integral signatures
SIGS=$[PP/SIG]
# how many pages they take
PG=$[SIGS*SIG]
# what's left in the document
LAST=$[PP-PG]
# how many blank pages needed
FILL=$[SIG-LAST]
# add blank pages if required by adding dummies to the .tex file
if [ $FILL -gt 0 -a $FILL -ne $SIG ]; then
sed -e "s+\\\end{document}+\\\fillup{$FILL}\\\end{documen t}+"
$DOC.tex $DOC.tmp
mv -f $DOC.tmp $DOC.tex
fi
# reprocess it to generate the dummy pages
pdflatex \\nonstopmode\\input $DOC.tex
# do a DVI version as well, so we can use Postscript
latex \\nonstopmode\\input $DOC.tex
# now we have a full number of whole signatures
SIGS=$[SIGS+1]
COUNT=0
while [ $COUNT -lt $SIGS ]; do
START=$[COUNT*SIG+1]
# generate a SIG's-worth as Postscript
dvips -p =$START -n $SIG -o $DOC.ps $DOC.dvi
# calculate the offsetting
IMP=`echo|awk -v s=$SIG -f impose.awk v=27 hl=-3 hr=12 thk=.1`
SEQ=`echo $COUNT | awk 'BEGIN {ORS=""} {c=$1+1;if(c10)print
"0";print c}'`
# use pstops to rearrange things
pstops -pa4 -b "$IMP" $DOC.ps | ps2pdf - $DOC-sig$SEQ.pdf
COUNT=$[COUNT+1]
done

The syntax of the awk script is left as an exercise to the reader :-)

I then pass the signatures to my local craft bookbinder, who sews them
and cases them in.

///Peter