john@basho.uucp (John Lacey) (03/04/91)
I am TeXing a document that will be printed four pages to a sheet. Essentially this is double-sided landscape two-up on a sheet of 8 1/2 by 14 paper, folded in half. Can anyone think of a way to print the pages on the page in the order they need to be? For example, a four page document, on a single sheet, needs pages 4 and 1 on the left and right, respectively, on one side, and pages 2 and 3 on the other side of the sheet. For such a trivial example, it is certainly possible to save the pages in boxes, and calculate the correct order before shipping them out. But a document of any real size would quickly exceed TeX's memory limitations. Certainly I could TeX the document in the normal fashion, and, noting the page breaks and so on, reorder the text to output those pages in the correct order. Nonetheless, you will understand if I don't really consider that a _solution_ :-). -- John Lacey 614 436 3773 73730,2250 john@basho.uucp or basho!john@cis.ohio-state.edu
ogawa@orion.arc.nasa.gov (Arthur Ogawa) (03/05/91)
In article <1991Mar4.063104.19998@basho.uucp> john@basho.uucp (John Lacey) writes: |I am TeXing a document that will be printed four pages to a sheet. |Essentially this is double-sided landscape two-up on a sheet of 8 1/2 by |14 paper, folded in half. | |Can anyone think of a way to print the pages on the page in the order |they need to be? For example, a four page document, on a single sheet, |needs pages 4 and 1 on the left and right, respectively, on one side, and |pages 2 and 3 on the other side of the sheet. [I tried e-mail without success, so I will inflict my response on the whole net. Sorry---AO] What you are attempting has a name: imposition. In printing a book using the time-honored signatures, pages are imposed 32 to a sheet, 16 per side. The sheet is printed, folded four times, trimmed, and bound with other such signatures in a stack. And there are other configurations, yours being one of the simpler ones, with a 4-page signature. On the other hand, you may be binding the pages in a single step, like a popular news magazine, where you stack up the sheets, fold them down the middle and stitch the whole thing together; this is called a saddle-stitched binding. In this case, one sheet has the first and second pages, and the penultimate and last pages. The best way to approach the imposition problem is definitely not in TeX, but in the dvi translator. In your case, you need to state that the pages are to be printed two-up (side-by-side), and also specify exactly which two pages are to be thus printed. If you have a duplex printer, you will also want to specify the pages in groups of four. If you are printing in 4-page signatures (unlikely, but what do I know?) you want to specify the pages in the order 2,3,4,1,...,4n-2,4n-1,4n,4n-3,... If you are binding your pages saddle stitched, you request the pages in the order 4N,1,2,4N-1,4N-2,3,4,4N-3,...,2N+2,2N-1,2N,2N+1, where I assume, w/olog, your job has a pagecount divisible by 4. Having come this far, I must say I don't know which dvi "driver" solves your problem, except that I would try Tom Rokicki's dvidvi first. This task is precisely what Tom wrote it for. Let me know if this helps you, Art Ogawa TeX Consultants