workflow for Do Not Press under Mac OS 10.11.06 El Capitan


I have found that the workflow I had established to impose pages no longer works under El Capitan. I had been using CreateBooklet as a service embedded within MacOS Preview application. It no longer worked within El Capitan. It would run a process, but show no results anywhere.

I’ve updated to the low cost Create Booklet standalone app (https://thekeptpromise.com/CreateBooklet/). I’m finding that it is simple to learn, and more powerful than the original service, which could only impose a single signature from a document – suitable only for saddle-stiching. The new version allows the rendering and exporting of multiple signatures from a single file, of a user-defined length.

I had previously learned how to make the imposed pages render as 2 UP, printer-speak for two copies of the same page per sheet surface. This helps avoid waste and affords greater flexibility in book size. I have had to re-order my steps in this workflow.

The dimensions of the Collaboration Round-Robin Speed Dating Game Notebook were 24p x 60p. This is a bit smaller than 4.25 x 7 inches, or 1/4th of a legal-sized page in the vertical or portrait orientation. A new edition was required for a new context at the University of Denver, and it didn’t make sense to fuss with trimming the booklet finely.

The Red Monkeys edition has a page size of 4.25 x 7 inches and is typeset in Scribus 1.4.6. PDFs of the pages in reading order were Exported from Scribus with “binding on the left”. The resulting PDF document was opened in Preview and “Printed” (Saved as PDF) with the following settings. Custom Paper Sizes were created at 4.25 x 7, 4.25 x 14, and 8.25 x 7 inches, all with 0″ margins. I had designed the booklet with the intenion of printing them 2 UP onto legal sized sheets (8.5 x 14 inches) After a couple of failed iterations I discovered that it would be best if I created 2 UP pages before imposing into “flats”. I’m not sure if my use of “flats” is correct here, but it is helpful for me to have precise nomenclature. Prior to El Capitan it had been simple to create 2 UP flats from the already imposed printer-spreads. Now I have to alter that order. So, I open the PDF document of the pages in reading order, and Print/PDF/Save As PDF onto a 4.25 x 14 inch page size and a Layout of 2 copies per page. That saves a document that is in turn opened with the Create Booklet app. I can then impose the 2 UP pages into printer-spreads onto a legal sized page. This is then exported as a PDF for later printing. Create Booklet adds the words “- Booklet” to the end of the document title and before the .pdf extension.

I’m placing these notes here so that I can remember the particulars.

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