Imposition Plugin Discussion

Student applicant for GSoC 2007: Mateusz Haligowski .

Back to GSoC 2007 Ideas Page

Background Information

 * Wikipedia
 * About.com
 * Preparing for imposition (about.com)
 * How it is done in Adobe Indesign
 * How it is done in Quark Express
 * Two examples of how it is done in CorelDraw: 1, 2

Imposition Plugin Discussion
Most needed use cases:


 * booklet printing: Arrange original pages on print sheets which are at least twice as large as the original page; make sure the backside pages end up at the correct position and orientation. Take care of bleed areas and crop marks.


 * business cards: Replicate original page in a fixed grid on the print sheet; take care that the backside matches.


 * n-folds: Scribus already allows reader spreads for a limited choice of n-folds. Provide a simple imposition for these on a print sheet.


 * Möbius band printing: Arrange a sequence of pages in strips which can be glued together to form a Möbius band (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%B6bius_strip)

Abstract
While Scribus is being developed rapidly and getting closer to proprietary solutions, it still lacks one feature that is extremely useful for people who want to print professional documents: imposition. So, as a Google Summer of Code 2007 project, I would like to prepare an imposition plug-in for Scribus. It has been an urgent enhancement for a longer time and is reported on project’s bugtracker[1].

The goal of this project is to provide an easy-to-use solution for printing multiple pages on both sides of the sheet of paper. It is intended to be a wizard, which will allow user to decide the size of the paper, and as a result it will create new Scribus file, with ready-to-print pages.

After some discussion with Scribus developers, I decided that the options implemented in the plug-in will include: » booklet printing Allow printing previously arranged pages on a larger sheet of paper, so that after cutting the pages will make a booklet. » printing business cards Allow printing an original page multiple times on a fixed grid on the print sheet, taking into consideration both sides of the sheet. » printing n-folds Scribus already supports 3-folds and 4-folds. However, printing them may be quite tricky, because of folding lines.

The target user of the plug-in is a user, who: » wants to print on a home printer It often happens, that user needs to print a single copy of a large document. In that case, Scribus will automagically design printing for the user effectively. Other cases are brochures on 3-folds, or double-sided bussiness cards. I intend to prepare a plug-in which will fully support this application. » has to prepare a job to be sent to a professional printer In most cases, the imposition is handled by specialists in the printing house. However, when it comes to simple documents which are to be printed in many copies, a popular way to limit expenses is self-prepared imposition.

As imposition is a complicated and difficult process, I am aware that the plug-in is is not meant to replace the high end tools used by professional printers.

[1] http://bugs.scribus.net/view.php?id=83