haboutnnah / zine-formatter

Small Python script for formatting zines into booklets

A small script for formatting zines suitable so that they can be printed on your home printer on US letter paper. It uses pdftk/pdfjam/pdfcrop behind the scenes.

Requirements

apt-get install pdfjam pdftk texlive-extra-utils 

Format requirements: the inputs to --zine and --cover must be 4inchx6inch files. (or at least a 2:3 aspect ratio)

What it does

• Take an input zine like this: https://jvns.ca/strace-zine-v2.pdf
• Add a little padding to every page so that nothing gets cut off
• Truncate the input zine to the number of pages specified in --pages
• Create a US letter page booklet like this: https://jvns.ca/strace-zine-v2-print.pdf

There's also an optional --cover argument. If you include a cover, it'll cut off the first page of your zine and replace it with the supplied cover page.

Try it out!

# Fetch a zine to generate the print version of
git clone https://github.com/jvns/zine-formatter.py
cd zine-formatter
wget https://jvns.ca/strace-zine-v2.pdf
python zine-formatter.py \
  --zine strace-zine-v2.pdf \
  --pages 16 \
  --view-output strace-zine-view.pdf \
  --print-output strace-zine-print.pdf