billbrod/booklet-assembler

Tools to turn RPG PDFs into booklets for printing

booklet-assembler

Tools to turn RPG PDFs into booklets for printing, i.e. imposition, inspired by this article. The article does a lot manually and uses Adobe, so I figured I could do better.

Basically, the goal is to get the PDF into a bunch of single pages, which we then rearrange into the proper order, and print as a booklet. LibreOffice (option 1) can rearrange the pages for printing in "brochure" order for us, but may change the way the pdf looks. Alternatively, we can rearrange the order of the pages manually, and then print with some other program (I've had good luck with Firefox).

1. If the PDF only comes as "spreads" (with two content pages side-by-side on a single pdf page), we need to split them in half: spreads_to_singles.py NAME_OF_FILE.pdf. This will create a new file with the same name as the old one, with -single appended to the end of the name, wherever you ran the script from.
2. (Unnecessary if using LibreOffice to print) The single pages need to be reorganized so that they can be assembled in the proper order: n 1 2 n-1 n-2 3 4 n-3 n-4 5 6 n-5 n-6 ...: rearrange_singles.py NAME_OF_SINGLES.pdf. This will create a new file with the same name as the old, with -booklet appended to the end of the name, for printing with something other than LibreOffice.
3. Option 1: The singles in regular order will print correctly with LibreOffice using the "brochure", as discussed below (LibreOffice may change images / symbols on the document, depending on how they're encoded, so you may want to use the next option below). We follow this article (skiping the steps about printing in the specific order, steps 3 and 4). Pasting the steps below for posterity. First, open the pdf in LibreOffice, then:

Open the print dialog. This can normally be done through Print in the menu or using the Ctrl+P keyboard shortcut.

Click the Properties… button

In the Orientation drop-down list, make sure that Landscape is selected.

In the Duplex drop-down list, select Short Edge.

• For my printer and LibreOffice, this is Duplex: On (Landscape)

Click OK to go back to the print dialog.

Under Range and Copies, choose Pages.

Type the numbers of the pages in this order (n is the total number of pages, and a multiple of 4):

n, 1, 2, n-1, n-2, 3, 4, n-3, n-4, 5, 6, n-5, n-6, 7, 8, n-7, n-8, 9, 10, n-9, n-10, 11, 12, n-11...

Examples:

   ~~4 page booklet: Type 4,1,2,3~~

   ~~8 page booklet: Type 8,1,2,7,6,3,4,5~~

   ~~20 page booklet: Type 20,1,2,19,18,3,4,17,16,5,6,15,14,7,8,13,12,9,10,11~~

Choose the Page Layout tab.

Under Layout, select Brochure.

Under Page Sides, in the Include drop-down list, select All pages.

Click Print.

4. Option 2: print the booklet pdf using some other pdf printing software, making sure to use "Short Edge" for double-sided printing and printing two pdf pages per printer page.

Additional scripts

• make_blank.sh: simple shell script to create a blank pdf page with given dimensions (requires ImageMagick). Accepts one argument, the dimension of the page in the format AxB, where A and B are numbers. You can find the dimensions of your pdf by running pdftk {filename} dump_data | grep "PageMediaDimensions" on it.
  • You can combine this blank page with your file (for the purpose of e.g., making the spreads line up correctly) by using pdftk cat (see rearrange_singles.py for an example use).

Requirements

• ghostscript for spreads_to_singles.sh. This was already installed on my system, see docs for how to install your own.
• pdftk for spreads_to_singles.sh, rearrange_singles.py. Also already installed for me, probably install from package manager.
• Python 3 for rearrange_singles.py because I find arithmatic and constructing arrays difficult in bash.
• ImageMagick for rearrange_singles.py to create blank files. You may get an error about permissions if it's used, in which case see here
• LibreOffice (optional) for printing the booklet.

See also

Bookbinder JS website that does this in a more general fashion.