Pagination for a 2-up (folio) bound book?

[SalishSeaSailor]

Similar to the question posed here:

http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/msg25194.html

I am looking to print a book from LO4 using landscape-oriented paper, and I need to have the book bound at the centre of the page (rather than the edge, as dissertations are typically bound). This requires a complex resorting of the pages when one generates the final PDF (as described above), so that on any face of any sheet you are likely to have page N and and page N+x+1 (where x is twice the number of sheet to the midpoint of the folio) and on the reverse of that sheet you would want to find pages N-1 and page N+x+2, e.g. page 4 and 50 on the front of the sheet, and pages 3 and 51 on the back. A book is often made of more than one section of perhaps 30-50 pages, and then one sews the sections together to produce a nicely bound book.

Clearly this sorting/rearrangement is pages is non-standard and requires special treatment to distinguish between the page number of the text and the sheet of paper.

Any suggestions on how to instruct LO to generate such a print image? Are there post-production (post PDF generation) methods to do this?

[oweng]

Note that the correct term for printing in duplux, 2 pages per side of a sheet of paper is folio i.e., each sheet of paper is folded once. I have edit the question to be clearer about this. Also note that this manner of printing is best suited to DTP software (e.g., Scribus) or handled via PDF post-processing.

[horst]

I managed to do it in combination LO and printer. In LO Menue:Print, Tab PageLayout check the Brochure Radiobutton. On the printer properties you have to set double sided printing.

I did it from Letter to Half-Letter. You don’t have to do anything in the formatting of your pages if the reduction is ok. Could not figure out how to print Letter on 11x17. But my printer can not handle 11x17.

I’m guessing here that you have to format your document as 11x17 in Writer (double the font size…) and then use the same procedure.

Adobe Reader has also a Booklet print option. But I could not make it print double sided with my printer. Many commercial printer/copymachines (Kinkos, Staples…) have also the booklet printing build in.

[ferguspearson]

This is exactly the problem I’ve had for years, and OpenOffice and LibreOffice help doesn’t help; nor do the print dialogues either for my printers, or for OO or LO.

I print, sew and bind books for my own use. For a while I made them in OpenOffice with font size 16 or thereabouts, then saved as pdf, then printed them as pdf booklet. But this was annoying, and on one occasion when I wanted someone else to edit a book they didn’t like the huge size font format. I also never seemed to get the mirrored image layout layout I wanted.

I’ve cracked it just today, I think. I put the text in LibreOffice, normal size - 12 or smaller - but then adjust the page size to A5. I format the page layout, etc, as I want it, then save to pdf. In pdf, print it as a booklet. In ‘pages to print’ you manually have to type in the numbers of the pages for the section you’re going to print (eg “1-16” for a section comprising 4 sheets), then in ‘booklet subset’ click ‘back side only’ (I don’t use a duplex printer), and print. Shove the pages back in the printer again, type in again the page numbers (1-16), and click ‘front side only’, and when you print you have a properly printed section! I hope it works for you.

[Robynsveil]

The only thing I’ve done differently is not save to .pdf, just straight from .odt go to print. I also did not use the duplex component of my HP 4650 because we’re in QLD, where paper tends to curl (humidity) and printers choke on it, so just sent it through the manual feed. Print settings, under 1) General tab, pages 1 - 20 2) LO Writer tab, defaults 3) Page Layout tab, ‘Brochure’ radio button, and Page sides, as you did, back, then front 4) Flipped paper stack on the short end.

[Robynsveil]

ETA: that worked once, that’s it. I now put text at 16pt, make sure I have page count multiple of 4, set page size A4. Set it to Brochure under “Page Layout”, then print “Front sides/right pages” first. Flip the paper, then print “Back sides/left pages” with “Print in reverse page order” ticked under the General tab.

[peci1]

You can export the ODT to PDF (in normal A4 size) and then print it using PDF X-change viewer (it has a free version). There, you are presented with a print option “Book”, which lets you select how much sheets are in one “folder”, which is (I hope) what you wanted.