[Elecraft] printing new manual

[David Woolley]

d.cutter at ntlworld.com wrote:

> Is there a possibility of printing onto small format (A5 in the Eu)
 > double sided from the same pdf file? This saves a lot of paper and
> weight.

This is fairly easy to do at home, provided you don't have more than 
about 100 original pages.  Its better and cheaper done with a laser 
printer, but I've also done it with ink jets.

The process I use is to get the PostScript file back by using print to 
file from Acrobat, or by using ghostscript's pdftops tool, then use the 
pstools utilities to rearrange the pages, shrink and double them up.  I 
then manually feed the printer for double sided printing (even in the 
office, using double sided printing capabilities is disapproved of, 
because of the number of paper jams, and the capability has been removed
from many printers - two pass printing is vulnerable to wasting half a 
run because of a single double feed).

Once I have the complete booklet, I fold the pages in groups, to get 
sharper creases, then punch holes for the staples using the hardened 
steel pins from picture hooks and manually insert staples.

For bigger books, and more permanence, I have pstools group the pages 
into signatures, then punch four equal spaced holes in the fold on each 
and sew them all together with cotton (one thread through the top two 
holes and one through the bottom two).  I then put the result into a 
Workmate type workbench vice (actually a generic, not the Black and 
Decker product), tighten it up, tighten and not the threads and apply a 
couple of coats of children's PVA glue.  Finally I put some open weave 
fabric on the spine and add end papers and glue that, then glue cover 
boards to the end papers.  The punching and sewing is time consuming, so 
this is a lot more work than a single signature booklet.

I'm sure print shops will do stapled booklets - upmarket laser printers 
can do them directly, but I think the best you could hope for for 
something larger would be perfect binding, i.e. cut all the sheets to A5 
and embed one end in glue.

I run pstools on Linux, but they are, I believe, pretty portable C code, 
so should be available for Windows, without needing to use Cygwin. 
Printing PostScript from Windows almost inevitably involves direct or 
indirect use of ghostscript, unless you have Acrobat Distiller.

-- 
David Woolley
Emails are not formal business letters, whatever businesses may want.
RFC1855 says there should be an address here, but, in a world of spam,
that is no longer good advice, as archive address hiding may not work.