[CLUE-Tech] Printing Tips-n-Tricks

[Matt Gushee]

Todd A. Gibson writes:
 > I'm looking to see who's got some cool printing tips up their sleeve.

The psutils package is the coolest printing tip I know. I don't know
why RedBloat etc. don't install it by default -- maybe there's a
licensing issue.

 > mpage -2 somedoc.ps
 > 
 > Looking at the output of the above, ideas of creating a booklet come to
 > mind.  This comes close to doing what I want to do:

 > If I have a document that is 4 pages or less in size, this is perfect.
 > A single sheet is generated.  I just fold the sheet in half and I have
 > this nice pamphlet-thingy.  However, if the document is more than 4
 > pages, more than one sheet is printed.  I can create a booklet with
 > this, but it requires me to fold each sheet individually and then lay
 > the folded sheets on top of each other.  The preferrable way is to be
 > able to take the stack of the printed sheets and fold them over.
 > 
 > Q1: To that specific problem, do you have a tool/script/idea 
 > that allows pages to be printed half size in an order that
 > allows the stack of printouts to be folded over to create a
 > booklet.

psutils inclues the psbook tool, which lets you output signatures of
any multiple of 4 ... so if you had 27 pages, you could do a 28-page
signature and get it all in one foldable unit.

 > Q2: In general, are there any tools (other than mpage) that you use to
 > manipulate the sizes and/or order of pages sent to a printer.

Ditto above. Besides psbook, psutils includes:

    psnup      for multiple pages on one
    psselect   for selecting certain pages or manipulating the order
    psresize   for simple resizing (duh!)
    pstops     for arbitrary transformations
    ... and more!

I highly recommend psutils.

Matt Gushee
Englewood, CO, USA