Imposition
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What is Imposition?
To impose means to order pages on a bigger sheet in a way, that you get a booklet (or something similar) with correct page order after folding. In the simplest case you impose four A5 pages on both sides of an A4 sheet.
In a print shop it could be that you've to place 64 inner pages of a book on one printing sheet. For private use you could want to zigzag-fold an A4 sheet as a brochure that fits nicely in a business envelope. You could make two pages with three columns each, or you could make six pages and impose them.
Another "style" of imposition is to place several identical templates on one sheet, e.g. labels.
Imposition schemas
Default schemas
ConTeXt has some built-in imposition schemas (see "arranging pages" in the manual):
- 2UP : 2 pages next to each other, n sheets arranged for a single booklet
- 2DOWN : 2 pages above each other, n sheets arranged for a single booklet
- 2SIDE : 2 pages per form, side by side in pagination order, single sided only (no real imposition, only paper saving)
- 2TOP : 2 pages above each other, single sided only
- 2TOPSIDE: 2 odd pages on one side, two even pages verso, above each other
- 2*2 : section: one sheet 2 x 2 pages = 4 pages (2 pages per form, for single sheets with front and back)
- 2**2 : section: one sheet 2 x 2 pages = 4 pages (2 pages per form, for book ordering)
- 2*4 : section: one sheet 2 x 4 pages = 8 pages (4 pages per form, 2x2 pages head to head)
- 2*8 : section: one sheet 2 x 8 pages = 16 pages
- 2*16 : section: one sheet 2 x 16 pages = 32 pages
- 2*4*2 : section of 16 pages: 2 sheets, 4 pages front and backside
- 2*2*4 : section of 16 pages: 4 sheets, 2 pages front and backside
- XY : one sheet with x rows and y columns, you can control the number with \setuppaper[nx=...,ny=...,dx=...,dy=...]
"form" means "one side of a sheet".
You can access this feature via
- \setuparranging
- texexec --pdfarrange=...
- online interface
|
TODO: some graphical examples (See: To-Do List) |
Additional schemas
Hraban needed a "3SIDE" schema to fit three "filius" planner pages on one A4 sheet. Willi wrote it:
\unprotect % New page imposition scheme 3SIDE by Willi Egger 2003-07-21 \installpagearrangement 3SIDE {\dosetuparrangement{3}{1}{6}{4}{2}% \pusharrangedpageTHREESIDE\poparrangedpagesAB\relax} \def\pusharrangedpageTHREESIDE#1% Willi's approach {\doglobal\increment\arrangedpageN \reportarrangedpage\arrangedpageN \ifcase\arrangedpageN \or \handlearrangedpageXandY{#1}000\arrangedpageA % 1 \or \handlearrangedpageXandY{#1}010\arrangedpageA % 2 \or \handlearrangedpageXandY{#1}020\arrangedpageA % 3 \or \handlearrangedpageXandY{#1}000\arrangedpageB % 4 \or \handlearrangedpageXandY{#1}010\arrangedpageB % 5 \or \handlearrangedpageXandY{#1}020\arrangedpageB % 6 \poparrangedpages \fi} \protect
You can use this code simply in your environment file. The other schemas are in page-imp.tex.
Use it like this:
\definepapersize [filius][width=92mm, height=172mm] \setuppapersize [filius][A4,landscape] \setuparranging [3SIDE] \setuplayout [location=middle, alternative=singlesided, grid=no, marking=on, leftmargin=10mm, leftmargindistance=0mm, topspace=2mm, header=4mm, footer=0mm, width=77mm, height=166mm]
ConTeXt is also handy when you need to rearrange an existing pdf into a booklet. This is a trial-and-error solution by Mari for rearranging an A4 pdf file into 2*8 spreads on A3 sheet (-> A6 pages when printed and cut). The texexec.tex file that was created by the first tries with texexec --pdfarrange (which didn't seem to have enough options) was a great help while working towards this solution.
Not sure about the margins on the final A6 pages (the original has equal left and right margins, some extra inside margin might be a good thing), but at least otherwise this seems to do the trick:
\setuppapersize[A6][A3] %individual page A6 size, print size A3 \setuparranging[2*8,rotated] %makes an 8 page gathering when folded (duplex printing!) \setupoutput[pdf] \setuplayout [backspace=0pt, topspace=0pt, width=middle, height=middle, location=middle, header=0pt, footer=0pt] \setuppagenumbering[alternative=doublesided] \starttext \insertpages [original_file.pdf][width=0pt] \stoptext
Testing schemas
Here's a convenient test file to help choose a schema or write a new one:
\setupbodyfont[ss,10pt] \setuppapersize [A7][A4] \setuparranging [2*2*4,doublesided] %% the schema you want to test \setuppagenumbering [alternative=doublesided,location=footer] \setuplayout [margin=0pt,width=fit] \setupbackgrounds [text][text][background=screen,backgroundscreen=0.7] \setupcolors [state=start] \setuplayout [location=middle,marking=on] \setuptolerance [tolerant] \def\Style{[2*2*4,doublesided]} \startbuffer[Fakepage] \strut \blank \midaligned{\Style} \vfill \midaligned{This is page \recurselevel} \vfill \stopbuffer \setupheadertexts[\CONTEXT\ imposition test document] \starttext % \showframe \dorecurse{16}{\getbuffer[Fakepage]\page} \stoptext
Cut marks
ConTeXt also allows to place cut marks. This can be controlled using the marking option of \setuplayout; possible values are:
- on show cut marks and page number
- screen ditto, but also print a grey-scale colour bar
- colour ditto, but also print a colour bar
- text print a text, defaults to
empty
The default settings are
\def\pagecutmarksymbol {\the\realpageno} \def\pagecutmarklength {.5cm} \let\pagecutmarktoptext \empty \let\pagecutmarkbottomtext \empty
To obtain register marks (or also called registration marks) you can use the small crop module which was posted to the mailing list.
Caveat: common troubles
Note that some features (e.g. table of content, internal references) are always disabled in imposition mode. So, they will not be included in the pdf if you ask for imposition. To get rid of this you can use the "arrange" key for texexec.
texexec --arrange yourFilename
This will run the document at first without page arrangement and impose the pages in a separate run after table of contents etc are created.
In SciTe/WinConTeXt you can run this command by choosing Process and Arrange in the Tools menu in SciTe.
Getting the last page of a Booklet
When you use imposition to print a booklet you want to put something on the very last page, the quadruple
pagebreak did not always fill the remaining pages untill you get a quadruple number of pages.
\unprotect \startvariables all nextquadruple: nextquadruple \stopvariables \installpagebreakhandler \v!nextquadruple {\ifdoublesided \!!counta\realpageno \!!countb\realpageno \advance\!!counta 4 \divide\!!counta 4 \multiply\!!counta 4 \advance\!!countb 1 \advance\!!counta-\!!countb \executepagebreakhandler\v!yes \dorecurse\!!counta{\executepagebreakhandler\v!empty}% \fi} \protect \setuppapersize[A5][A4] \setuparranging[2UP,rotated,doublesided] \setuppagenumbering[alternative=doublesided] \starttext \subject{Front Cover} \dorecurse{10}{\input tufte \par} \page[nextquadruple] Back Cover \stoptext
Getting to the Back Cover of a Booklet
When using imposition to print an a5 booklet (a4 folded in half) John Devereux wanted to specify content for the back cover, independently of the actual number of pages in the booklet. Here is a way that worked (thanks to Wolfgang Schuster on the mailing list). \page[beforequadruple] gets to the inside back cover. Another \page gets to the outside back cover.
\unprotect \startvariables all beforequadruple: beforequadruple \stopvariables \installpagebreakhandler \v!beforequadruple {\ifdoublesided \!!counta\realpageno \!!countb\realpageno \advance\!!counta 5 \divide\!!counta 4 \multiply\!!counta 4 \advance\!!countb 2 \advance\!!counta-\!!countb \executepagebreakhandler\v!yes \dorecurse\!!counta{\executepagebreakhandler\v!empty}% \fi} \protect \setuppapersize[A5][A4] \setuparranging[2UP,rotated,doublesided] \setuppagenumbering[alternative=doublesided] \starttext \subject Front Cover \dorecurse{10}{\input tufte \par} \page[beforequadruple] Imprint \page Back Cover \stoptext
Imposition by signatures
Sometimes you want a booklet, but the pages are too many to be folded together. This is true especially when the number of pages rises above 80. So you need to pass the output PDF to an imposer, like pdfjam or psbook or pdfpages. The problem is that you need to get the "right" number of pages.
E.g., if the original pages are 128, no problem, the signature is 64 and you can impose it without problems.
But, if the original pages are 129, the optimal signature is 44, so you need to add 3 pages during the PDF compiling.
First, create the following imposer.lua file
-- translated from perl to lua. Original code is in -- http://theanarchistlibrary.org/docs/altools-6.6.tar.gz local maxsignature = 80 -- define the maximum of the signature local minsignature = 20 -- define the minimum of the signature function optimize_signature(pages) local originalpages = pages -- be sure we don't mess up assert(numberpage ~= 0, "I can't work with 0 pages") --set needed pages to and and signature to 0 local neededpages, signature = 0,0 -- this means that we have to work with n*4, if not, add them to -- needed pages local modulo = pages % 4 if modulo==0 then signature=pages else neededpages = 4 - modulo end -- add the needed pages to pages pages = pages + neededpages -- give a try with the signature signature = find_signature(pages) -- if the pages, are more than the max signature, find the right one if pages>maxsignature then while signature<minsignature do pages = pages + 4 neededpages = 4 + neededpages signature = find_signature(pages) end end print("ImposerMessage:: Original pages: " .. originalpages .. "; " .. "Signature is " .. signature .. ", " .. neededpages .. " pages are needed, " .. pages .. " of output") -- let's do it tex.print("\\dorecurse{" .. neededpages .. "}{\\page[empty]}") end function find_signature(number) assert(number ~= 0, "I can't find the signature for 0 pages") assert((number % 4) == 0, "I suppose something is wrong, not a n*4") local i = maxsignature while i>0 do if (number % i) == 0 then return i end i = i - 4 end end
The ImposerMessage is important if you want to pass the output of the ConTeXt run to a script to do the imposing.
Then the master file
\def\fillthesignature#1{ \directlua{dofile("imposer.lua") optimize_signature(#1)}} \starttext \dorecurse{53}{ \chapter{test} \input tufte \section{\the\realpageno}} \page[yes] % reset the page \fillthesignature{\the\realpageno} And this is the last page (the backcover) \stoptext