[pdftex] producing a5 booklets from a4

[Heiko Oberdiek]

On Wed, Oct 09, 2002 at 03:30:11PM +0000, Michael Chapman wrote:

> I am probably missing something very basic, but is their a method that will 
> convert BOOK.pdf to PAGE_1.pdf, PAGE_2.pdf, ...... , PAGE_N-1.pdf, 
> PAGE_N.pdf ?

This can be easily done by pdfTeX:
* main driver file with:
  * getting the page number:
    \pdfximage{BOOK.pdf}
    ==> register \pdflastximagepages contains the number of pages
  * Loop that write the files PAGE_?.tex with mainly:
    \includegraphics[page=?]{BOOK.pdf} or even better with
    package pdfpages
  * Writing a shell script that calls
      pdflatex PAGE_?.tex
      ...
  * Calling the shell script

I think the same is possible by ConTeXt. An other alternative
is Ghostscript.

Yours sincerely
  Heiko <oberdiek at uni-freiburg.de>