[Scribus] What is the best way to create a booklet?

Carol Kankelborg cckborg1
Wed Sep 17 19:51:38 CEST 2003


Thank you for everyones' replies to my booklet question.  Here is a 
summary of the
responses.  I think I have my process down.

Robbie Pickering pointed out the distinction between "Copy shop" and 
"proper printer."
I was not clear in my question, but the program I am making is quite 
simple -- black & white --
and I guess I should properly say I'm taking it to a copy shop, not a printer.

Patrick's advice to do as much of the work yourself to make it easier 
on your printer (and less
likely for them to mess it up) is wise.

I think the best advice of all is call your copy shop/printer and see 
what their preference is.  So simple,
yet I hadn't thought of that.  I called and they said they preferred 
a file that had 2 booklet pages
per file page that would print properly double sided.

Everyone agreed that creating the document with pages in order was 
the easiest, then, depending
on your printer/copy shop's requirements, rearrange things so it 
prints out properly.

Michael Below suggested exporting to ps, use psbook to put it in booklet order,
then ps2pdf to generate  PDF.

I gave this a trial run.  psbook and psnup are available through 
psutils (and psutils-a4) which
I downloaded with fink.  I created a 4-page document in scribus.  The 
page size was half-letter
(the size of the finished booklet page).  I printed the document to 
file which generated a postscript
file, test.ps.  I ran

          psbook -s4 test.ps testreorder.ps

which ordered the pages 4,1,2,3, followed by

         psnup -2 testreorder.ps testbook.ps

         ps2pdf testbook.ps

which generated testbook.pdf.  I now have a  PDF file which will 
produce a booklet when
printed double-sided.  Of course, I will make a script of this and 
use piping now that I have
the steps down.

Thanks again for all your help.

-- 
======================================================================
Carol Kankelborg




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