[pdftex] producing a5 booklets from a4

[Kester Clegg]

Hans Hagen <pragma at wxs.nl> writes:

[...]

> hm, i thought it was you who started talking about high end page
> imposition, so why this kind of unfriendly reaction

I don't want others to waste their time, asking someone to please read
the initial email is hardly unfriendly.

[...]

> eh, if you're starting point is a single sided document, then you
> expect the postprocessor to mess around with margins, so ...
> 

What does psbook do?

> >Just completely forget that.  Let's just say I have an a4 pdf document,
> >typeset single-sided.  I don't care if came off the moon and was created
> >by a camel.  If I try to process that document using the parameters I
> >gave with texexec, the booklet does not come out right.  The pages are
> >all set with the same margin spacing, instead of being arranged suitably
> >for a book.  However, putting that same pdf document through the pipe
> >suggested by Ricardo means it *does* come out right.  Am I making myself
> >crystal clear?
> 
> no, but it looks like you expect the arranging application to add
> margins (or maybe to look at the boundingbox or whatever)
> 

All I was after was an explanation why the two commands gave different
results starting from the same pdf file.   One typesets an a5 booklet
correctly, the other doesn't.

[...]

 >Call me stupid, but I clearly missed what it meant here.  I thought I
> >could use texexec to rearrange the pages of an *existing* a4 pdf
>                                                             ^^
> that's the point you missed: a5a4 tells context to map A5 onto A4
> which is not the same as mapping A4 onto A4
> 

Excellent - that is what I suspected after your colleague's help.  :-)

[...]

> as said, if your starting point is an ***A4*** document, then say
> --paper=A4A3 (see previous mail); when printing, acrobat will nicely
> scale down the a3 to a4. [as an alternative, do a first run of texexec
> --pdfcopy and scale the doc down to a5]

Do I need to print from acrobat then?  

> 
> a.tex : \starttext \showframe \dorecurse{10}{\input tufte \page} \stoptext
> 
> texexec --pdf a
> texexec --pdfcopy --scale=.707 --result=b a
> texexec --pdfarra --paper=a5a4 --print=up b

[...]

> as said, texexec is just a wrapper, you can copy the generated
> texexec.tex file into yourfile.tex, tune the settings (manipulate
> whataver you want, add whatever you need, etc) and process that one;
> the fact that others have done so succesfully may be an indication
> that it *can* be done -)

OK, so whatever, texexec will do it by creating another tex source
document and processing that, which is also the pdfpages solution.  That
answers my question (in the negative) as far as psbook|psnup
alternatives are concerned for pdf.

Thanks for all the help.
k.