XPost: alt.comp.os.windows-11, comp.text.pdf, alt.comp.os.windows-10   
   From: anton.txt@g{oogle}mail.com   
      
   Marion:   
      
   > > I believe LaTeX has packages for that.  I have produced   
   > > PDF booklets from Postscrpt, with psbook and psnup.  The   
   > > incoming PostScipt was mine, from either LaTeX or GNU   
   > > Troff.   
   >   
   > Thanks for that suggestion as, in the past, I printed   
   > booklets.   
   >   
   > Printing a booklet requires arranging both sides of the   
   > pages in a specific order so that when the 8.5x11-inch   
   > printed sheets are folded in half, the pages appear in the   
   > correct sequence as if they were in a booklet..  [...]   
   > However, back to the printing of booklets, that's one   
   > thing I had trouble finding free (as in no cost) software   
   > as printing a booklet from folded 8.5x11-inch paper is   
   > more complex than standard printing, especially when   
   > dealing with double-sided printing and odd numbers of   
   > pages & title pages.   
      
   That's exactly what I did with psbook and psnup from   
   psutils.  I produced an A4 booklet from an A5 document with   
   sequential pages.  I printed my booklent by with a normal   
   single-sided printer, in two runs, without reordering the   
   sheaf in between.  All the rearrangement was taken care of   
   during the generation of the PDF.   
      
   Before *roff and *tex, I used to print such booklets in   
   whatever software I had at hand, including MS Word '97 and   
   Adobe PageMaker.  For Word, I had a simple Pascal program   
   that would generate two comma-spearated lists of page   
   numbers, ready to paste in into the Print window, for   
   printing the even and odd pages of the booklet.   
      
   The alrorithm is rather simple, IIRC.  After you append   
   empty pages to make the total a multiple of four, the   
   following invariant holds true for each side of any quatro:   
      
             page_left + page_right = page_total + 1   
      
   For example, a twelve-page booklet will be printed on three   
   (12/4) sheets thusly:   
      
                         even       odd   
                         12 1 verso 2 11   
                         10 3 verso 4  9   
                          8 5 verso 6  7   
      
   So, you first print the odd pages in increasing order, and   
   then odd ones in decreasing order, to end up with a set of   
   sheats ready to fold (IIRC).  I still seem to have the ugly   
   ancient program in Pascal that I wrote in late school or   
   early University to perfrom that task:   
      
     https://paste.sr.ht/~shepton/4d8374ec6e2c543fa8caad43709596b1cae5cd94   
      
   It should compile in FreePascal compiler.   
      
   > As noted, LaTeX has sophisticated built-in features to   
   > analyze the content of the PDF to more intelligently   
   > handle page breaks to avoid splitting images or creating   
   > an awkward text flow.   
      
   No, LaTeX and Troff are tools to author and typeset new   
   documents, rather than modify existing PDFs.   
      
   > Since the expensive cost of free (no cost) software is in   
   > the trials and tribulations to find the best ones that   
   > work,   
      
   Which is why I prefer to use time-honoured classics.   
      
   > does anyone have experience with any of the distributions   
   > above for creating the booklet style PDFs?   
      
   I have used this one a long time ago:   
      
     https://ctan.org/pkg/booklet   
      
   And I have used psutils (with psbook and psnup) no so long   
   time ago:   
      
     https://github.com/rrthomas/psutils   
      
   Generally, I have found *roff much easier than LaTeX.  I   
   have written several Groff macros myself, including those to   
   wrap text around images as shown in this newsletter:   
      
     https://corewar.co.uk/coreops/coreops02.txt   
      
   Both Groff and LaTeX have great and helpful communities.   
      
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