User:Simon/Trim4/PDF imposition: Difference between revisions

Latest revision as of 21:28, 11 June 2020

PDF imposition

Premise: I will write my own script(s) to impose pages from a source PDF:

The aim is to write a Python script to automate the process by iterating recursively over pages in a PDF. These will be called in Python as subprocesses using the subprocess module.

PDF imposition from scratch

23.09.19
I'm working out which commands to use from the command line. The process should be as follows:

   #burst the source PDF, keep the name of the source plus page number (-%d)
   $ pdftk source.pdf burst output source-%d.pdf

Results:

To identify the size of a single burst page in pixels, this is the command I used:

   $ identify Carrier_burst-1.pdf

which returns this information:

   Carrier_burst-1.pdf PDF 398x591 398x591+0+0 16-bit sRGB 19486B 0.000u 0:00.009

26.09.19
Then for the next step, resizing each page to fit 2-up on an A4. It's easy enough to reduce to 50% if the original is A4, but in other formats it's a bit trickier...

   #resize the resulting burst single page PDF (this only does one - needs Python loop to iterate recursively)
   $ magick mogrify -resize 50% new_source.pdf
   #or to resize to specific pixel dimensions such as 256x256
   $ magick mogrify -resize 256x256 new_source.pdf

After resizing to 50%, the identify command returns these values:

    Carrier_burst-1.pdf PDF 199x296 199x296+0+0 16-bit sRGB 51910B 0.000u 0:00.000

27.09.19
The next steps are these:

   #impose 2up on a page using imagemagick montage command
   #assemble imposed PDFs into a single file

Using pdfimpose

pdfimpose is a python library that does imposition. It's quite easy and powerful, though again it is not quite set up for cutting pages. I found some Python code, which creates an imposed PDF in a 2x2 format, with folds to be made first vertically, then horizontally:

   from pdfimpose import impose, VERTICAL, HORIZONTAL
   
   impose(inname=["foo.pdf"],outname="foo-impose.pdf",fold=[VERTICAL, HORIZONTAL],bind="left",last=0,)

The resulting layout for the PDF is like so:

Documentation for pdfimpose can be found here:

https://buildmedia.readthedocs.org/media/pdf/pdfimpose/latest/pdfimpose.pdf

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
-Hackpact 1: PDF imposition<br>
+== PDF imposition ==
 Premise: I will write my own script(s) to impose pages from a source PDF:<br>
@@ Line 7: / Line 7: @@
 The aim is to write a Python script to automate the process by iterating recursively over pages in a PDF. These will be called in Python as subprocesses using the subprocess module.
-== PDF imposition from scratch ==
+=== PDF imposition from scratch ===
 '''23.09.19'''<br>
 I'm working out which commands to use from the command line. The process should be as follows:<br>
@@ Line 27: / Line 27: @@
 '''26.09.19'''<br>
-Then for the next step, resizing each page to fit 2-up on an A4. This involves a bit of mathematics (it's easy enough to reduce to 50% if the original is A4, but in other formats it's a bit trickier...
+Then for the next step, resizing each page to fit 2-up on an A4. It's easy enough to reduce to 50% if the original is A4, but in other formats it's a bit trickier...
      #resize the resulting burst single page PDF (this only does one - needs Python loop to iterate recursively)
@@ Line 39: / Line 39: @@
 '''27.09.19'''<br>
+The next steps are these:
      #impose 2up on a page using imagemagick montage command
      #assemble imposed PDFs into a single file
-== 24.09.19 ==
+=== Using pdfimpose ===
-Sidenote: I found another way to do imposition using a script Michael wrote called booklet.sh, downloadable here: https://git.xpub.nl/murtaugh/95layouts<br>
+[https://pypi.org/project/pdfimpose/ pdfimpose] is a python library that does imposition. It's quite easy and powerful, though again it is not quite set up for cutting pages. I found some Python code, which creates an imposed PDF in a 2x2 format, with folds to be made first vertically, then horizontally:
-It's a shell script that can run in the bin folder from the home directory, which allows you to run it wherever you are in the computer (you don't have to cd to the folder where the script is. The command to run it from the terminal is:
-     $ booklet.sh source.pdf
+     from pdfimpose import impose, VERTICAL, HORIZONTAL
+    impose(inname=["foo.pdf"],outname="foo-impose.pdf",fold=[VERTICAL, HORIZONTAL],bind="left",last=0,)
+The resulting layout for the PDF is like so:
-It needs a few dependencies to run (mainly psutils).
+[[File:E r 2x2 imposed.png|300px|frameless]]
-    # Requirements: psutils, pdftk, python3 with reportlab (make_blank_pdf.py)
+Documentation for pdfimpose can be found here:
-    input=$1
-    base=${input%.*}
-    echo converting $input to $base.booklet.pdf
-    pdftk_utils.py $input pad --multiple 4 --output $base.01.pdf
-    pdftops -paper match $base.01.pdf $base.01.ps
-    psbook -s`pdftk_utils.py $base.01.pdf count` $base.01.ps $base.02.ps
-    psnup -2 -PA4 $base.02.ps $base.03.ps
-    ps2pdf $base.03.ps $base.booklet.pdf
-    rm $base.01.pdf $base.01.ps $base.02.ps $base.03.ps
-NB: Comment out or delete the last line to produce three .ps files - the first one is the source PDF, the second is the PDF imposed in the correct order, the third one is the imposed PDF pages on an A4 page. This works well if all you want to do is impose, print and fold. For cutting sheets you need to position the pages 2-up, centred on the page, which I can't quite figure out how to do...
+https://buildmedia.readthedocs.org/media/pdf/pdfimpose/latest/pdfimpose.pdf