A5BOOKLET(1)

📦 version 1.0, in debian bookworm, debian trixie, ubuntu jammy, ubuntu noble, ubuntu questing, ubuntu resolute

✨ A5BOOKLET(1) — General Commands Manual ✨

Hiii bestie 🫶 okay so this is the manual page for a5booklet 🎀, a tool that's literally all about making you a cute little booklet. Let's get into it 💅

🌸 NAME

a5booklet — copy two A5 pages from a .dvi file to one A4 page in another. 🦋

🎀 SYNOPSIS

a5booklet file[.dvi]

💖 DESCRIPTION

Okay so a5booklet is a little script that lets you typeset two A5 pages side by side on a single A4 page (landscape) ✨. It takes pages from your original file and rearranges them so that, after double sided printing and a bit of reshuffling, you end up with a gorgeous A5 booklet that's ready to be stapled right down the middle 📖🔥. Literally iconic.

The script calls a very clever program called dvidvi, written by Tomas Rokicki (the author of dvips) 🧠👑. dvidvi is the one doing all the real heavy lifting, no cap 💅.

The output gets written to two files: file-1.dvi and file-2.dvi 📄📄.

First, print the first file with:

dvips -ta4 -tlandscape file-1

Then flip the stack upside down in the printer 🙃, and print the second file using:

dvips -ta4 -tlandscape file-2
⚠️ Make sure that the bottom of the A5 pages is on the correct side of the paper when you put the stack back in for printing the back side. And after the two print jobs are done, you must re-shuffle the paper stack before you can staple it. Don't skip this bestie, it's giving disaster otherwise 💀.

🦋 SEE ALSO

tex(1), dvips(1), dvidvi(1). 🌈

🙈 BUGS

The script has A4 papersize hardwired into it 📏. Admittedly, that's a pretty European-centered way of thinking 🇪🇺💜.

Page number 1 is always the first page in the original .dvi file, not the page numbered 1 by TeX's numbering scheme. Lowkey confusing, so keep that in mind 🥺.

👑 AUTHOR

a5booklet is written by David A. van Leeuwen (david@ElseWare.cistron.nl) 🧚, but it's not original in any way, ngl 🙈. The main two lines that do the work are inspired from the man page of dvidvi ✨. a5booklet is available under the conditions of the GNU Public Licence 🌈.

Byeee bestie, this manual was brought to you by OCTOBER 1997 and the A5BOOKLET(1) crew 💖🫶✨

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