---

title: Booklet
author: David Baynard
date: 10 Jan 2018
fontfamily: libertine abstract: |
Reorder PDF pages to form booklet ...

Reorder pages of a pdf for simple booklet printing.

An experiment with lopdf to solve a relatively annoying problem.

Feedback is welcome, on any aspect.

Note: this only corresponds to a single printing strategy.

What it does

Some printing software can’t reorganise pdfs for booklet form. This executable (and library) can help.

For example, take an 11 page A4 pdf. The pages are:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

When printing as a booklet they should group as follows:

1 | 2 3 | 4 5 | 6 7 | 8 9 | 10 11 | Blank

On each sheet, then, should be

6 7 | 8 5
4 9 | 10 3
2 11 | Blank 1

and if printed using short edge duplex, this should be the result.

This program therefore rearranges the pages into

6 7 8 5 4 9 10 3 2 11 Blank 1

generating Blank by deleting the contents from page 1.

Use

Install

Clone, then

> cargo install

Make sure ~/.cargo/bin is in $PATH.

Run

> pdfbooklet _infile_ _outfile_

Take care, this will probably clobber outfile.

Also, running without arguments will use stdout (or stdin and stdout).

For help,

> pdfbooklet --help

Issues

Use the issue tracker. Submit any files that do not work.

Future priorities

Priorities are

• Produce other page patterns for other printers
• Logging
• Producing a guide pdf for printer testing
• 2-up (so the resulting pdf can be printed directly)