[Scribus] Some tips for 2 pages imposition

[Guillaume Pratte]

Hello,

I have been encouraged by Louis Desjardins to post this tip to the mailing 
list, so here I go.

I am currently formatting a book that my grand-mother is publishing, and I was 
told by the printer (i.e. the business were my grand-mother will print the 
book) to make the imposition myself. 

First I panicked for a short while when I saw that neither Scribus nor LaTeX 
seemed to have this feature implemented. I saw the page about imposition on 
the Scribus wiki [1] and it helped, but pstops [2] is still too much of an 
esoteric command to use for me, event if I am a programmer by profession and 
I have been using Linux as my primary OS for at least 6 years. 
[1] http://wiki.scribus.net/index.php/Imposition
[2] http://wiki.scribus.net/index.php/How_to_make_impositions_with_pstops

So I searched the web, and finally got my way around. The book is 5?x8?, 
printed two pages on one 8?x11, cut in half (to make two 5?x8?) and one pile 
put on top of the other ("folded") to make the book. 

Here is how I made the imposition :

1) Render the book as PostScript.

2) Reorder the pages :
psbook book.ps temp.ps

3) Assemble them :
psnup -pletter -W5.5in -H8.5in -2 temp.ps book_for_print.ps

4) Edit the %%BoundingBox of book_for_print.ps with a text editor. Change it 
to :
%%BoundingBox 0 0 612 792
This seems like a bug with psnup where it keeps the source dimentions for the 
BoundingBox instead of taking the output dimentions.

The only thing I am not sure about is the duplex orientation. I made some 
tests with my personnal printer and I went wrong. I will have to check with 
the printer (the business) to see if they can handle it or if I have to 
change things from my side.

Guillaume Pratte