pdfbook2 v1.4 (https://github.com/jenom/pdfbook2)
(c) 2015 - 2020 Johannes Neumann (http://www.neumannjo.de)
licensed under GPLv3 (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0)
based on pdfbook by David Firth with help from Marco Pessotto
Create print-ready PDF files from some INPUT PDF files for booklet printing.
The resulting files need to be printed in landscape/long edge double sided
printing. The default paper format depends on the locale and is choosen by
pdfjam. It can be set with the --paper option.
Before the pdf is composed the INPUT file is cropped to the relevant area in
order to discard unnecessary white spaces. In this process, all pages are
cropped to the same dimensions. Extra margins can be defined at the edges of
the booklet and in the middle where the binding occurs.
The OUTPUT is written to INPUT-book.pdf. Existing files will be overwritten.
All input files are processed seperatly.
This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it
under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free
Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option)
any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT
ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for
more details. You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public
License along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
Simply copy the file to any convenient location preferably covered by the
PATH variable of your shell. Make sure it is set as executable like
chmod +x pdfbook2
for unix like systems.
python 3.6, pdfjam, pdfcrop and their dependencies.
To simply create a booklet from input.pdf you can use
pdfbook2 input.pdf
to create input-book.pdf. To select a special type of paper you can do
pdfbook2 --paper=letter input.pdf
for letter or
pdfbook2 --paper=a4paper input.pdf
for standard A4. To increase the inner margin for binding use
pdfbook2 --inner-margin=200 input.pdf
for custom paper size (eg. 5x10 inch) use
pdfbook2 --papersize='{5in,10in}' input.pdf
to increase the default value of 150. You can submit multiple files to the
script for processing like
pdfbook2 input1.pdf input2.pdf
which will result in input1-book.pdf and input2-book.pdf.
pdfbook2 [options] file1 [file2 ...]
--version show program's version number and exit
--help, -h show this help message and exit
GENERAL
--paper=STR, -p STR
Format of the output paper dimensions as latex keyword (e.g.
a4paper, letterpaper, legalpaper, ...)
--papersize=STR
Format of the output paper dimensions as string eg. '{5in,10in}'. (Note the braces, and the comma!).
Option has no effect if 'geometry' not installed.
--short-edge, -s
Format the booklet for short-edge double-sided printing
--no-crop, -n
Prevent the cropping to the content area
MARGINS
--outer-margin=INT, -o INT
Defines the outer margin in the booklet (default: 40)
--inner-margin=INT, -i INT
Defines the inner margin between the pages in the booklet
(default: 150)
--top-margin=INT, -t INT
Defines the top margin in the booklet (default: 30)
--bottom-margin=INT, -b INT
Defines the bottom margin in the booklet (default: 30)
ADVANCED
--signature=INT
Define the signature for the booklet handed to pdfjam, needs to
be multiple of 4 (default: 4)
--signature*=INT
Same as --signature
--resolution=INT
Resolution used by ghostscript in bp (default: 72)
1.4 2020/01/20
- migration to Python 3
- fixed bug if the input document had only one page
- fix for signature option not working
1.3 2019/08/12
- removed wait after popen to prevent deadlock with very large documents
1.2 2015/06/03
- added man page
1.1 2015/06/01
- added resolution, signature, no-crop options
- better handling of input files with different margins on odd and
even pages
- added short options
- speedup for bound calculations and cropping by setting ghostscript
resolution to 72 (ref. --resolution option)
1.0 2015/05/27
- initial version