Page reordering

Page reordering

[Matthew Baker]

Hi,

Does Context or PDFTeX have any means of reordering pages?  Also, is it
possible to output such that
two A4 pages are placed side by side on an A3 page?  My motivation is
this: I write an A4 doc which is
bound by printing pages onto A3, double-sided, then stapling in the
middle and folding in half.  This
means pages have to be printed in non-consecutive order and have to be
placed side-by-side on A3.
My solution in the past has been to convert to PostScript and use
pstools.  Unfortunately I seem to be
making very big docs these days and the PS is prohibitively big so my
only other option is to photocopy
the A4 pages onto A3 manually.  Yuck.

Alteratively, does anyone know of the existance of a PDF equivalent to
pstools?  Is the PDF structure
sufficiently simple such that this would be possible?

Our Email is currently broken and I can't use Pine.  Consequently, I'm
using Netscape Mail for the
first time.  I hope this works ok.

- Matthew

Re: Page reordering

[Hans Hagen]

Matthew Baker wrote:

> Does Context or PDFTeX have any means of reordering pages?  Also, is it
> possible to output such that
> two A4 pages are placed side by side on an A3 page?  My motivation is
> this: I write an A4 doc which is
> bound by printing pages onto A3, double-sided, then stapling in the
> middle and folding in half.  This
> means pages have to be printed in non-consecutive order and have to be
> placed side-by-side on A3.
> My solution in the past has been to convert to PostScript and use
> pstools.  Unfortunately I seem to be
> making very big docs these days and the PS is prohibitively big so my
> only other option is to photocopy
> the A4 pages onto A3 manually.  Yuck.

This feature is built in context. If you upload the dutch beta manual,
you will see samples (around page 35). (This chapter was published in
the maps, of which some back issues are still available I think.)

Arranging pages is a last stage activity (once all references are sirted
out, so one has to comment the arrange setup lines when doing normal run
and uncomment them in the last one.) 

But, to serve your purpose, there is texexec. Try:  

  texexec  --help  paper  print 

so: 

  texexec  --print=up  --paper=A4A3  --pdf  filename 

Another feature is: 

  texexec  --pages=odd      --result=temp-1  filename 
  texexec  --pages=1,3,4,5  --result=temp-2  filename 

Can be of use sometimes. So, your wishes already are honored -) 

will do the job, given that you use A4 papersize in your document. No
need to setup things in the file. 

> Alteratively, does anyone know of the existance of a PDF equivalent to
> pstools?  Is the PDF structure
> sufficiently simple such that this would be possible?

I asked Thanh to look into selective pdf page inclusion (\pdfimage page
3 {filename} primitive). When available, writing a utility that
manipulates the pages will be a breeze (probably a tk script generating
context tex files and pdftex collecting things). 

> Our Email is currently broken and I can't use Pine.  Consequently, I'm
> using Netscape Mail for the
> first time.  I hope this works ok.

Looks ok to me. 

Hans

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                                          Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE
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Re: Page reordering

[Matthew Baker]

Hans Hagen wrote:

> But, to serve your purpose, there is texexec. Try:
>
>   texexec  --help  paper  print
>
> so:
>
>   texexec  --print=up  --paper=A4A3  --pdf  filename
>
> Another feature is:
>
>   texexec  --pages=odd      --result=temp-1  filename
>   texexec  --pages=1,3,4,5  --result=temp-2  filename
>
> Can be of use sometimes. So, your wishes already are honored -)
>

That is truly amazing.  I don't think I will ever be using LaTeX again :)
The commands

   texexec --print=up --paper=A4A3 --pages=odd --result=temp-1 filename
and
   texexec --print=up --paper=A4A3 --pages=even --result=temp-2 filename

will even give me the odd and even pages so that I can do it in two passes
on my
single-sided printer :>

Now, why on earth didn't I ask this *before* I took the last document to to
the
printers?

- Matt