Creating Page Border for Single Page only

Question

I am digitizing a book and there is only a single page which has page border as shown in the attached image. How can I create border to a single page? Is there a library where I can choose a border from?

Answer 1

You can make a title page like this using TikZ decorations e.g. inside a titlepage environment. TikZ allows for a lot of different decorations and you can even define your own. It also allows for easy use of colors etc.

Example to show the principle:

\documentclass{book}

\usepackage{tikz}
\usetikzlibrary{calc}
\usetikzlibrary{decorations.pathmorphing}

\usepackage{lipsum}% dummy text
\begin{document}

\begin{titlepage}
    \centering
\begin{tikzpicture}[overlay,remember picture]
    \draw [line width=1mm,decorate,decoration={snake
        %,segment length=<length>,amplitude=<length>
        }]
        ($ (current page.north west) + (1cm,-1cm) $)
        rectangle
        ($ (current page.south east) + (-1cm,1cm) $);
    \draw [line width=1mm,decorate,decoration={zigzag
        %,segment length=<length>,amplitude=<length>
        }]
        ($ (current page.north west) + (2cm,-2cm) $)
        rectangle
        ($ (current page.south east) + (-2cm,2cm) $);
\end{tikzpicture}
    \huge
    Your title text

    Author

    more text

\end{titlepage}

\lipsum

\end{document}

Answer 2

One option would be to use the fancybox package. Analogous to \thispagestyle{...}, it provides \thisfancyput(<x>,<y>){<LR stuff>}. Here is a very short example.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{fancybox}% http://ctan.org/pkg/fancybox
\usepackage{lipsum}% http://ctan.org/pkg/fancybox
\begin{document}

\thisfancyput(3.25in,-4.5in){%
  \setlength{\unitlength}{1in}\fancyoval(7,9.5)}%
\lipsum[1-20]

\end{document}

You can add various components sequentially by using the starred version * of \thisfancyput.

It is extremely limited in its capability with respect to tikz/pgf.

---

Here is another alternative, using pst-node (from the pstricks bundle). Using eso-pic to tap into the "background" of a specific page via \AddtoShipoutPictureBG*, you can be creative with any pstricks-related code:

\documentclass{article} 
\usepackage{pst-node}% http://ctan.org/pkg/pstricks
\usepackage{xcolor}% http://ctan.org/pkg/xcolor
\usepackage{eso-pic}% http://ctan.org/pkg/eso-pic
\usepackage{lipsum}% http://ctan.org/pkg/lipsum
\begin{document} 

\begin{titlepage}
  \AddToShipoutPictureBG*{%
    \begin{pspicture}(\paperwidth,\paperheight)
      \psset{xunit=\the\paperwidth,yunit=\the\paperheight,nodesep=2cm}
      \pnode(1,1){page.northeast}%
      \pnode(0,0){page.southwest}%

      \psframe[linestyle=dashed,linewidth=10pt,linecolor=orange!50]([angle=45]page.southwest)([angle=-135]page.northeast)
    \end{pspicture}
  }
  \centering
  \huge
  Your title text

  Author

  more text
\end{titlepage}

\lipsum[1-10]
\end{document} 

This does require a latex -> dvips -> ps2pdf compilation sequence though. xcolor provided an advanced colour selection interface, while lipsum provides dummy text Lorem Ipsum style.

Answer 3

the "glisterings" column by peter wilson in tugboat 32:2 (2011) includes instructions for a border using fleurons from the (free) Web-O-Mints font, with latex support provided by Maurizio Loreti. the general approach is to define an "evenfoot" and an "oddfoot" by stringing together appropriately matching fleurons in a picture environment and using the \put command to move the frame into the desired location. it is placed on the desired page using the standard \pagestyle technique.

since this column is in the most recent issue of tugboat, at the moment it is accessible only to tug members, but i will see if i can negotiate an exception.

Answer 4

This kind of thing would probably be easiest to perform with Tikz. Simply draw a path around the border of the page and decorate it as described in chapter 21 of the manual.

edit: I could have sworn I added a link... Well added it now, as for the example, I think Martin's answer already adresses that, so it would be superfluous to add one here now.