Booklet layout for legal paper - having trouble

[Stavrogin78]

Hello! New here, and relatively new to scribus.

I'm trying to put together a 4-page flyer, with a booklet-type layout. The idea is to print it on legal (8.5x14) paper, with a single fold, producing 4 pages (am I using these terms right?).

I must be doing something wrong. For my page setup in Scribus, I created the page with the physical dimensions of the folded page - 7" wide and 8.5" high. I can print this to PDF (printing in order of pages 4,1,2,3). Then I'm trying to print in 2-up (so pages 4 and 1 print on one side of a legal sheet, flip, then print 2 and 3 on the other side).

I've been struggling with this to no end. Everything I try wants to re-size the printed page so that it doesn't actually fill the paper the way it should. Using psnup (I'm running Debian), the printed portions are always out of position, never where they should be. I cannot for the life of me make the software piece the two 7x8.5 pages onto an 8.5x14 sheet properly. It wants to either shrink them or shift them to leave a huge margin at one end of the paper and cut off the content at the other end.

I run into the same problems whether using Document Viewer (the default pdf viewer in Debian) and trying to print 2 pages per sheet, or whether I use the psutils stuff. I just cannot get it right.

Is there something i'm missing? Any hints here? I would have thought that Scribus would be able to export to PDF in 2-up right out of the gate.

Any help would be appreciated!

[Nermander]

It's been a while not since I did this so I am not sure what solutions still apply.

There is a page in the wiki giving a few examples of programs to use for imposition (which is the term for what you are doing).

https://wiki.scribus.net/canvas/PDF,_PostScript_and_Imposition_tools

I think Bookbinder is the easiest one (it can only manage simple impositions though).

I used Multivalent in the past but I think they have made changes to newer versions don't have the impose command in the free version. Also Multivalent needed you to craft a command line for the imposition, which was sometimes not easy.

jPDF Tweak is another decent alternative, it gives you some assistance with creating the "command" at least (it has a somewhat GUI).

The page on the wiki mentions Adobe Reader, but I think that for n-up printing Adobe Reader adds borders to the pages which makes the page size wrong (but this may depend on version of Adobe Reader).

[mnawij]

Hi Stavrogin78,

With only four pages, manual imposition would work easier than trying to impose the four pages.

1. Create scribus document with 2 legal size sheets
2. Use guide to split pages in half and any other margins needed
3. First Sheet (front) layout would be page 4 left half and page 1 right half
4. Second Sheet (back) layout would be page 2 left half and page 3 right half

Hope this helps.   Also see   https://www.gerv.net/software/booklet/   for a website javascript to help layout future larger books manually.

mnawij

[RodneyLee]

Mnawij has it right lay it out full size