[scribus] Scribus update required

Peter Nermander peter at nermander.se
Fri Oct 1 07:17:39 CEST 2010


> on top of what owen answered: hopefully, scribus won't ever do any
> imposition [1] . we need a free application for it and there was some
> work around podofo to create one.

Scribus can almost do impositions already today. What is missing at
the moment is a way to choose which page from a PDF to import into an
image frame (and maybe to get information about the trim box). But the
ability to place a page from a PDF into an image frame is the key to
do impositions, and placing a PDF is already possible.


I have been thinking about a solution like follows:

For imposition you would use a "template". Such a template would
normally be a two page document with a number of image frames on each
page.

The image frames are placed AND rotated the way the pages shall be placed.

The image frames are named with a name pattern telling which page and
how it should be aligned inside the frame (here is where we would need
to know the trim box if the pages have bleed!).

Then all we need is a Scribus script that, using the pages from the
template document places pages from the source PDF into the frames.


Scribus could the be delivered with a small set of imposition
templates (like booklet and 3-fold) and someone could also write
scripts to create more complex templates.


I think this solution would even be better than for example how Quite
Imposing works for Abode Acrobat


I have made a few template documents with impositions I have used
using my pstops based scripts (however not yet with support for
different alignment of the page within the frame) but have only made
some stumbling attempts with Scribus scripts...


/Peter



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