Need help formatting book for printing

[frazelle09]

i’m trying to make a 1/4 of an 8.5" x 11" page book. So i have figured out how to format the “Even page” and the “Odd page” and i can see how to get 4 of them on one 8 1/2" x 11" page to print, which is what i want. i see that the printer can print all pages or just the even pages and then the odd ones. This is wonderful! However if i convert this to a 100 page pdf and take it to the copier and have them print the first 50 pages (even) and then turn the stack over and print the remaining 50 pages (odd) of the back, the pages won’t come out correctly. i used to have a stack of pages that i could do this with, but i accidently threw them away! So, now i have to recreate the book.

At this point, for example, i print one complete page which has the first four odd pages: 1,3,5,7. Then, i turn the page over and print the even pages, which has: 2,4,6,8. Now, when i observe the pages - front and back - i see that on the back of page 1 is page 4; on the back of 3 is 2; on the back of 5 is 8; and on the back of 7 is 6.

Is there a way to fix this - lol?

Have a great evening, please stay safe and be happy!

[EarnestAl]

If it is a commercial printer, take the file to them and let them do the the print layout.

Are you folding the paper, stitching, then trimming? Some pages need to be upside down for that, see this off-site page

Also Imposition - Wikipedia

[EarnestAl]

I think it is possible to do with LO, Adobe Reader (has good options for booklet printing), and a virtual pdf printer. Sadly, I don’t think PCLinuxOS has Adobe Reader available but maybe another pdf reader will work.
Using a test document with big page numbers in frames anchored to Header I created a simple 16 page document
BrochurePrint16pp.odt (11.4 KB)

1. Print to the pdf printer as a Brochure

2. Open the resulting pdf in Adobe Reader and print as Booklet the front side only with Right binding
   

   

3. Print the Back side only as Booklet with Left binding. Depending on physical printer output, pages might need to be reversed under Pages to Print
   

   

The resulting pdfs (delete .doc extension added for site)
BrochurePrint16ppFront.pdf.doc (10.3 KB)
BrochurePrint16ppBack.pdf.doc (10.3 KB)

It would be easier and less chance of error with the app keme1 linked to

[keme1]

Try printing one of the sides with pages in reverse order. To my recollection, this used to work best by first printing even pages in reverse order, then print odd pages on the backsides in normal order.

I believe I used this with single pages and 2-up. With 4-up sheets I guess the sequence may be messed up anyway. Depends on whether you have the pages finished in the software (should be good) or you use the “multiple pages per sheet” option in the print dialog (probably messes up the sorting). Make sure you test it on a small batch first, as you describe. Good luck!

[frazelle09]

Thank you very much EarnestAl and keme1 for answering so quickly!

Let’s see… We do not take it to a “commercial printer” but to the corner copy shop. We finally found a commercial printer who will cut the stack of papers into the required 4 parts. We then take these 4 stacks home and put them together, on top of each other so that they form the complete book. This commercial printer does a good job and we can then just align the pages and staple, using a larger-than-normal stapler and 3, 1/2" staples. Since the book isn’t all that thick, this works very well (i think one of the books has 212 pages).

This is something else i discovered… LibreOffice doesn’t seem to have the possibility of just printing one page when, for example, 4 up and “even” or “odd” are chosen - it wants to print the whole document - lol.

We’ve been using this book for a long time and i think when we first made it, we finally just had to cut the odd or even pages into their 4 parts and rearrange them on clean sheets with paste…

Again, have a beautiful day and please stay safe!

[keme1]

Sorry about that. I posted from my phone so I couldn’t check that it would work.

A friend who is not currently registered here, read your question and suggested to me a solution, relevant to the imposition link posted by @EarnestAl. It involves export to pdf, then using that pdf file as a source for a print-ready file, which you bring to the print service.

If you want to try that:

PdfBooklet

[frazelle09]

Thanks, keme1. i’ll check it out. We looked at their site and it seems that it only runs under Windoze. We’re using PCLinuxOS.

Have a wonderful day!

[frazelle09]

Oopsss… i just checked Synaptic for pdf and see like 50 tools for pdf manipulation. The linux version (there is one for Linux) seems to be in .deb format and we use .rpm. i realize that we can use a conversion software to convert .deb to .rpm but maybe i should just try something straight from Synaptic to begin with…

Be happy!

[Wanderer]

@frazelle09

We looked at their site and it seems that it only runs under Windoze

As I read above python gtk this should run with linux fine…

[frazelle09]

Thank you Wanderer. You are entirely correct. However since we found innumerable options in Synaptic (once we thought to look) we’re going with one called JPDF Arranger and another one called JPDF Tweak.

And, actually i’m also trying to figure out how to implement EarnestAl’s 16 pages suggested solution. So, it looks like after some 20 years of trying to figure this out - off and on - we’re finally going to be able to wrangle it into shape.

Thanks again and have a radiant day!