PDF, PostScript and Imposition tools

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Introduction

First: you may not know what imposition is: Wikipedia will tell you.

A list of tools which are useful for imposition.

Two type of software are listed here:

• software which can be obtained free of charge and can help you do some imposition tasks.
• imposition software (free, free of charge or payware)

Multiplatform

• pdftk (free)
• bookbinder (free)
• multivalent (free) (see How to make impositions with Multivalent)

example for making a booklet:

$ java.exe -cp multivalent.jar" tool.pdf.Impose -dim 2x1 -layout 2,3,4,1
-paper "297x210 mm" -verbose file.pdf

• PoDoFo Impose (free; imposition tool distributed with the PoDoFo library)
• On-line imposition with PoDoFo (web based, work in progress; by Pierre Marchand; there is still an old server)
• Adobe Reader 8 and 9 (latter is only available on windows) will do booklet printing for you. For a A4 booklet, you just needs to export an A5 document to PDF and then tell Adobe Reader to print it as a booklet.

Linux, Unix and "Darwin"

• pstops (see How to make impositions with pstops)

OS X

• PDFmergeX (donationware): not really an imposition tool... but it may have enough features for you
• CombinePDFs (donationware)