[scribus] (OT, sort of) Imposing PDF 2-up

[John Jason Jordan]

I have a 504-page PDF file that is letter size (8.5 inches by 11
inches), portrait, and printed with rather large fonts. I received it
as a PDF file, but it would be trivial to print to PS, if necessary.

It would look much better if the job was printed 2-up, duplexed. I
wish to print two copies per print job, so that the imposition is:
________________________ 
|                                     |
|                                     |
|         1                1        |   front
|                                     |
|_______________________|

________________________
|                                     |
|                                     |
|         2                2        |   back
|                                     |
|_______________________|

After printing I will cut the book block in two, yielding two copies
from each print job. I have a print shop guillotine to do this. I also
have a book binder to bind the copies.

I have a lot of PDF viewers on my Fedora 14 computer: Adobe Reader,
Foxit, Cabaret, Okular, Evince. None of them can do this in their print
output dialog box. 

I also have command line tools for manipulating PDF and PS files, but I
cannot figure out how to do the above kind of imposition. I know I have
done this in the past, but it was a long time ago on a Windows
computer. I'm sure it can be done on Linux with PDF command line
utilities, but I don't even know which one to try, let alone the
syntax. I might even be able to do it with lpr, but I'd still need to
figure out the syntax, and the lpr man page doesn't help here.

Note that "booklet" printing will not do. While I have a guillotine, I
do not own a paper folder, so manually folding 150 sheets prior to
binding, over and over again for each copy, is not a viable option.
Besides, the binding machine prefers cut sheets. 

Any suggestions?