Bookletizer - Create foldable booklets from any PDF
Bookletizer takes any standard PDF and turns it into a simple booklet suitable for printing on a regular printer. An example booklet created by Bookletizer can be found here.
Bookletizer is a wrapper for pdfjam and pdftk that makes creating printable, foldable booklets out of any PDF as easy as possible. It is designed to streamline and automate the often tedious process of designing and paginating booklets. The resulting booklets do not require any staples or binding -- just print on double-sided paper and fold the pages together down the middle.
The main benefit of using Bookletizer is that it automatically handles pagination of booklets -- more specifically, it is able to insert the correct number of blank pages into the PDF to allow for a 2-up booklet layout. While this is possible to do manually or on a one-off basis with some commercial products, that approach does not scale to the production of hundreds or thousands of booklets, which was required for the Global Storybooks project. Bookletizer solves that problem and now forms part of the regular PDF toolchain for the project, but can be easily used to convert any PDF without additional configuration.
Example
The first page of a typical booklet pdf looks something like this (yes, it's supposed to be "upside-down"):
This arrangement allows both sides of a single booklet page to be printed together in the right order. When printed on a duplex (double-sided) printer, the pages will be automatically re-oriented to their correct positions.
Requirements
pdftk- Note: on recent versions of Debian and Ubuntu, the
pdftkpackage has been removed in an eventual move to a new java-based version - Be aware that there are issues with installing
pdftkas a snap package, including the inability to open files located anywhere other than the the user's home directory; this answer on AskUbuntu provides a straightforward way to install the program on Ubuntu LTS
- Note: on recent versions of Debian and Ubuntu, the
pdfbook(frompdfjam)- Available as part of
texlive-extra-utilspackage from most distros or follow directions on pdfjam home page
- Available as part of
Installation
No installation required -- once the requirements have been satisfied, just download or clone this repository and run the script directly from the project folder.
Usage
To create a simple, foldable booklet, just provide the name of an existing PDF:
./bookletizer.rb "my_document.pdf"
(Where my_document.pdf is the path to an existing PDF on your local machine.)
The resulting PDF will be located in the output folder, with the filename my_document-booklet.pdf.
Paper size
Output defaults to A4 standard paper size. To specify US Letter size instead, use the -l option:
-l,--letter-size: Specify paper size as US letter (default A4)
It is assumed -- but not necessary -- that the input file is in portrait orientation. Documents in landscape orientation will still work, but may look odd as they will be constrained to the horizontal width of the (portrait-oriented) booklet pages.
License
MIT.