Re: templates for booklets

[Dick Margulis <ampersandvirgule -at- att -dot- net>]

Peter Jones wrote:
> 
 Dick Margulis writes
>
> ..
> >What you should try to avoid is manual imposition of a booklet in a word
> >processing program. It is guaranteed to shorten your life.
> 

to which Peter replies:

> OK, so how do you do it. I have Word. Nowt else. How do I take my
> document and form the imposition ready for bookleteering.
> 
> Is there a reliable third party package (not some full blown DTP that
> converts my Word doc to something else) that 'imposes'?
> --

to which Dick now responds:

As I said before, there may be some way to do this in Word, or using a
particular printer driver, or using a third-party package (aha, skipping
ahead in the mailbox, I see Sharon Burton-Hardin recommends Clickbook).

However, for the benefit of anyone who cannot spend $30 and only needs
to do this once, or who has some special sort of booklet to do that
Clickbook cannot handle, here is the manual method (and lest anyone
think I am being supercilious. let me assure you that this is exactly
the way it has been done by printers for a long time).

1. Using blank pieces of paper the size you intend to print on, and
using as many as will be required for the finished booklet, trifold,
pamphlet, signature, or what-have-you, fold them the way you want the
finished item to appear. Do not make any cuts. 

In the case of signatures, you have to know something about folders to
execute this step correctly, but for sheets that will have only one fold
or only parallel folds, you need no specialized knowledge.

2. Hold the folded booklet so that you are looking at the first page and
it is right-side-up.

3. Using a pen or pencil, number the lower, outside corner of each page.
Be sure to go all the way to the end. Put an underscore below the 6 and
the 9 (even though you know they are at the bottom of the page).

4. Unfold the sheet or sheets of paper. Now you know where all the pages
have to print, and whether they print right-side-up or upside-down.

5. Each sheet of paper is a signature, consisting of a front form and a
back form. Page 1 (or the lowest-numbered page in each signature) is on
the front; page 2 is on the back. Mark the front of each signature with
a capital F in a circle. Put an X on the lowest-numbered page.

The unfolded sheets become your imposition guide. You can transfer the
information to a thumbnail view if that is more convenient.

In Word, you will have to be very careful about controlling where each
page ends, inserting breaks as needed. If a page ends mid-paragraph, you
will have to split the paragraph into two pieces, force-justify the
first piece and begin the second piece flush left, possibly with a
lowercase letter.

In order to print pages upside-down, you will probably have to convert
the page to a graphic--perhaps a PDF file or EPS that you insert.

Hope this helps,

Dick