For a poster I set the page size in LO writer to A3 or 42x29,7 cm.
Now I want to print this page on two sheets of A4 paper (29,7x21 cm).
After some searching I found no way to do this in Libreoffice Writer.
The opposite task - multiple smaller pages on one print sheet - is well supported.
Did I oversee something?
Splitting a huge sheet into smaller ones is generally a feature offered by some drivers.
I know it is bit tedious but have you tried to print it in a Postscript file and use a graphical program like GIMP to split the result?
Yes there are workarounds, like PDF-export and a PDF printer with the feature in question (Foxit worked for me).
But I would rather expect the textprocessor to do this job, when it already organises all the other parameters like margings, paper size etc.
So this turns out to be a feature request.
Personal opinion: I’d rather consider it is external to the text processor (though desirable) because page lay-out for multiple sheets is fundamentally different from the usual text lay-out, with specific parameters (other than number of pages across and down) such as the overlay area (to account for non-printable margins in the printer and to allow glueing the sheets together), cropping marks, …
Feature requests can be proposed on the bugs site.
Photoshop, CorelDraw and all Desktop Publishing Software can do it - plus free PDF viewers.
So why not LO.
I’m no developer, so I can’t argue about design but I see a difference. Photoshop, GIMP, CorelDraw are graphical applications, consequently once the objects are positioned, it is “easy” to split because you don’t need to reformat. Same for the PDF viewers: in the PDF file everything is chewed up to small pieces akin to graphics (it is obvious when you copy and paste “text” without first requesting “text mode”: you get text boxes independent from each other).
In Writer, there is a huge processing to layout the text. Sending subpages to the printer would probably require recomputing the lay out in a strange way (part of lines should be ignored but correctly justified).
If document is sent to the printer driver using the PostScript language (but other languages are possible), this could be solved by sending also a clipping rectangle. This handles smartly the case when you split middle of a character.
Photoshop, CorelDraw and all Desktop Publishing Software can do it - plus free PDF viewers. So why not LO.
@ajlittoz correctly commented about graphical applications. I would say that DTP is also in that category, albeit “on the edge”.
Draw, the graphical app in LO, also does it.
Just tested LO-Draw, and found no way to print 1 large page on multiple sheets.
Did you try to print?
In Draw’s print dialog, the LibreOffice Draw tab, one Size option is to distibute page to multiple sheets.
For Size in Draw, also see → Draw size choices: ‘Distribute on multiple sheets of paper’ vs. ‘Tile sheet on paper with repeated pages’ ??
Ok, I see the option in Draw.
Does not work correctly though, messes up sizes and parts of the drawing in an erratic way.
So, sigh, while the PDF-export and PDF-Foxit-Print works, maybe it’s actually better to leave LO developers with their main challenges, instead of adding another one.
At best, use Draw to make your poster.
LibreOffice Draw tab.If you must use Writer, you can copy the finished Writer page and paste it into Draw. A little kludgy, but workable:
ctrl+A if your Writer document has only one page)Page - Properties to the desired page size.