Two pages per sheet brochure

Question

I am looking for a package that helps to print two pages per sheet for a brochure. I have used leaflet class for printing three pages per sheet.

Booklet package looks promising. But it doesnt work well. The first page when centralized goes out of page. The code is given below

\documentclass[letterpaper,12pt]{article}
\usepackage[print,twouparticle]{booklet}
\begin{document}
hello World
\newpage
From me
\newpage
Hi again
\newpage
\section*{{\small TECHNICAL SESSIONS}}
\subsection*{{\footnotesize DAY 1}}
\end{document}

Answer 1

Whenever I need to do this, I always separate the ideas of sheet and page, and concentrate on the typographical unit, the page.

As I don't know what half-letter-paper is, I'll deal with A4 sheets, and A5 pages (which fit two to an A4 sheet). In this case, I'd specify the document entirely as A5 pages (or half-letter-paper), using geometry or memoir's built-in page geometry features, and then, at printing time, print them two up or in a booklet arrangement using my PDF viewer and printer driver in the way that does that best.

Answer 2

I also wanted to do this but I ended up using pdfbook with the command:

pdfbook --short-edge my.pdf

You might also need to change the signature (number of pages being folded), for example:

pdfbook --short-edge --signature 12 my.pdf

[Update and further notes by B. Crowell, 2021.]

pdfbooks2

What appears to be included along with a latex distribution these days, on linux, is not the pdfbook written by David Firth but a reimplementation called pdfbook2, by Johannes Neumann, http://github.com/jenom/pdfbook2 . There is a man page, which seems to closely duplicate the README on the github project's home page. It looks as though Neumann's version duplicates the command-line interface of Firth's.

Printing using a home printer

In addition to this, I found it necessary to spend some time figuring out how to print the resulting pdf file correctly on a low-end home printer that doesn't have double-sided printing. The following instructions are for a printer that outputs pages face-down, with the head of the page at the front.

As I test, I suggest first printing only two sheets (pages 1-4) using the instructions below, to make sure they work for you. This should give you the outer pages of the booklet, and if they look OK, you can just go on and continue printing the other, inner pages.

First print all even pages. Then take the stack of output out of the tray and flip the whole thing as a unit by 180 degrees with the same motion you would normally use if a book was sitting, closed, on a table in front of you, and you wanted to flip it over to look at the back cover. That is, you're rotating about an axis that sticks out perpendicularly from your belly button. Now put the pages back in the paper tray, and print the odd pages.

If you want to bind or staple your booklet somehow, there are various howtos on https://www.instructables.com/ that pop up if you search for "booklet."

Answer 3

With magazine and raster libraries from tcolorbox, it is possible to manually compose leaflets and booklets.

Following code shows an example taken from "Leaflet Example" in tcolorbox (v4.03) documentation. The original 6 pages leaflet has been converted into a 4 pages booklet.

\documentclass[a4paper,landscape]{article}
\usepackage[noheadfoot,margin=0pt]{geometry}
\usepackage[skins,raster,magazine]{tcolorbox}
\usepackage{lipsum}
\newenvironment{leaflet}[1][]{%
\begin{tcolorbox}[nobeforeafter,empty,colback=white,
sharp corners,size=minimal,left=10mm,right=10mm,top=10mm,bottom=10mm,
width=\textwidth/2,
breakable,
break at=\textheight,
height fixed for=all,
reset box array,
store to box array,#1]}
{\end{tcolorbox}%
\begin{tcbitemize}[raster columns=2,raster equal skip=0pt,blankest]
\tcbitem\consumeboxarray{4}
\tcbitem\consumeboxarray{1}
\tcbitem\consumeboxarray{2}
\tcbitem\consumeboxarray{3}
\end{tcbitemize}%
}
\pagestyle{empty}
\begin{document}
\begin{leaflet}[underlay={\node[above=5mm,font=\footnotesize]
at (frame.south) {- \arabic{tcbbreakpart} -};}]
\begin{center}
\bfseries\LARGE Example
\end{center}
\section{Introduction}
\lipsum[1]
\section{Main Part A}
\lipsum[2-8]
\section{Main Part B}
\lipsum[9-15]
\section{Conclusion}
\lipsum[16-18]
\end{leaflet}
\end{document}

Answer 4

What about adding:

\special{landscape}
\target{\magstepminus1}{\paperheight}{\paperwidth}
\source{\magstep0}{\paperwidth}{\paperheight}

Right before \begin{document}?