Place two A5 pages on A4 using memoir

Question

I was trying ConTeXt out and found out about imposition. I'm specifically interested in the 2UP schema, so I can just print on a regular A4 and trim.

I have a book typeset using LaTeX and memoir. Then I took a look at memman.pdf, to try to find information about how this could be accomplished. I tried using a4paper and landscape class option, then \pageav, but that just got me a A4 sheet with a A5 page inside it.

How can it be done? I read something about pdfpages but didn't try it just yet, because I think there is a native way of doing so using memoir.

score 6 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 29 '11 at 20:48

6

I don't think just memoir can do this. I like to do this with pgfpages (part of pgf/tikz), the border shrink command is especially useful. Sample from the pgf manual:

\usepackage{pgfpages} 
\pgfpagesuselayout{2 on 1}[a4paper,landscape,border shrink=5mm]

answered Apr 29 '11 at 20:48

kgr

2,251

Note: there is some trickiness with page numbers, meaning you will need to compile without pgfpages, and recompile with pgf pages with in addition the line "\nofiles". This ensures that the .aux has the right page numbers. – kgr Apr 29 '11 at 20:51

score 4 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 28 '11 at 08:57

Apart from doing it in TeX directly, you could generate the PDF in A4 and then print it as an A5 booklet.

Acrobat Reader has an option to print A4 documents as a booklet. You can also use the following bash script to convert an A4 PDF file into an A5 booklet:

#!/bin/bash

BOOK_PDF="$1"
NAME=$(basename $BOOK_PDF .pdf)

echo "NAME is $NAME"

TMPDIR=$(mktemp -d)
BOOK_PS=$TMPDIR/$NAME.ps
BOOKLET_TMP_PS=$TMPDIR/$NAME.booklet.tmp.ps
BOOKLET_PS=$TMPDIR/$NAME.booklet.ps
BOOKLET_PDF=$NAME.booklet.pdf


pdftops $BOOK_PDF $BOOK_PS
psbook $BOOK_PS $BOOKLET_TMP_PS
pstops "4:0L@.7(21cm,0)+1L@.7(21cm,14.85cm),2R@.7(0,29.7cm)+3R@.7(0,14.85cm)" \
   $BOOKLET_TMP_PS > $BOOKLET_PS

ps2pdf $BOOKLET_PS $BOOKLET_PDF

Thank you, this works perfectly. The perfect solution, however, would be using pdfpages. I feel like it is easier to use — and I actually don't want to print the whole book, just a few pages. — rberaldo, Apr 29 '11 at 01:30

score 2 · Answer 3 · answered Apr 28 '11 at 07:46

2

As far as I know memoir does not support this, I would go with pdfpages.

If you got the impression from the manual, please let me know from where, such that I can change it.

answered Apr 28 '11 at 07:46

daleif

54,450

I just assumed that memoir could do it. Is it hard to do that using pdfpages? – rberaldo Apr 29 '11 at 01:22

Place two A5 pages on A4 using memoir

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