Re : Tabloid Style? (About document imposition)

["Despot" <despot@xxxxxxxxxx>]

> For printing purposes, I need to reposition the pages of my company's
> newsletter. I want the first page to face the last page, the second page
> to face the next to last page, and so on. I believe the style I'm trying
> to achieve is called Tabloid Style. Can anyone help me?
>
> thanks!
> Christina
> Christina Gideon
> Information Developer, Comtech Services, Inc.
> 303/232-9486 ext. 123
> christina.gideon@comtech-serv.com

Deborah Snavely replied :

> A utility software program called ClickBooks used to exist for Windows & Mac
> (the Windows version had free download trial version) that was affordable. I
> never used it, but it was supposed to take your PS output and arrange pages
> as you wanted. It's still around but the site I found it on was pitched to
> churches and talked mostly about MS Word output.
> (http://www.bluesquirrel.com/clickbook/index.html?)
>
We have tried using ClickBook for Mac. It helps with simple text-processor or
database pages, but generates errors with styled text (smallcaps and bullets
appear compressed, etc.). For elementary use only.

There is a professional-level workaround to avoid buying expensive imposition
software. We actually use it to impose newsletters and catalogues for our
Risograph (a sort of serigraphic A3 printer with a drum, silk paper plates, and
offset printing ink instead of toner), but it may also be used for complex book
imposition.

You need : 1. your original, unimposed Source doc in a pdf version ; 2. an
Imposition doc created with a page layout program that is able to import
separate pages from a pdf document. Adobe's InDesign 1.5 has the best pdf
handling we know.

Let's say your Newsletter has 8 A4 pages (I am used to european sizes, sorry).
You distill it to Newsletter.pdf, an 8-page, A4 Portrait, Acrobat document. This
is the Source file.

Now for the Imposition file. Let's say your printer's maximum output size is A3.
You create an A3 Landscape template with InDesign, containing 4 pages (for
example : "A4>A3/8p.id"). Each of these will show two A4 pages imported from the
source document (Newsletter.pdf), in the following order : A: 1-8, B: 3-6, C:
2-7, D :4-5. In the final output, your C page will print on the back of your A
page, and D is on the back of B. The sorting will change with different
paginations, but the principle remains. Remember that your original page
numbering must be a multiple of 4 -- insert full page ads or standard info to
match the count.

If you import your pdf pages by linking and not embedding, this template will
serve for any subsequent document of the same size and pagination you have to
print, provided that you rename your new file "Newsletter.pdf" and replace the
older file in its directory. If the link updating is set to "auto" in the page
layout program, the process is entirely automated. The new newsletter will be
imposed at the very opening of the "A4>A3/8p" target document !

We have an "Imposition" directory with different templates (A5>A3/32p, A6>A4/4p,
etc.) pointing to a single "Source.pdf" file, whose contents, size, and/or page
count changes each time. For color separations, "Source.pdf" is sequentially
replaced by the different color versions of the same document. The whole thing
is now a matter of pdf renaming and replacing.

This is a free and accurate imposition system based on the collateral use of
popular DTP software. The ache is that it takes some time to set up, but it is
largely paid back by the time saving it provides in all-day use. Not every firm
has the needs and means to send its stuff to a high-tech offset workflow.

N.B. All this should also work with FrameMaker, but our current version (5.5.3)
does not support pdf importing. We are upgrading to 6.0 these days, and we'll
try to to shift to FM for these tasks. I can send a report to interested Framers
within a few weeks.

As this "Do it yourself" idea has proved useful to some people around us, I
thought it was also worth posting on the list.

Slobodan Despot
<despot@bluewin.ch>
Executive Director
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