Selecting sheet size for booklets

You will be asked to select the sheet size for the target document. There are several choices.

• You can select a sheet large enough to hold two pages from the original. That guarantees sizes will not be changed, but does not guarantee that the results will fit on any particular size of paper.
• You can select any specific page size, including wide letter (11 x 8.5 inches) or wide a4. Wide here refers to the shape of the paper, not to a special size. When you pick a different page size make sure you select wide or tall, whichever is appropriate. The pages will be scaled up or down to fill the space available.

If the original document has different sizes of page, the largest page is used to do all calculations.

Selecting a binding

The binding refers to what you will do once you have printed the booklet sheets.

• Continuous means that the pages will simply run 1,2,3,4,... Normally, this won't be folded in half, just stapled along an edge or in the corner, or punched and filed. It can be a good way to present a hand-out of a presentation.
• Saddle stitched is the most common type of booklet, and what most people will choose. Once the pages are all printed, you simply fold in half, and the numbers will run from front to back. There may be up to three blank pages added at the end if the number of pages is not a multiple of 4.
• Perfect bound is more like a bound book. It can be thought of as a series of saddle stitched booklets each of which is read in sequence. For instance, the first booklet may have pages 1-32, the next 33-64 and so on. This is suitable for long documents which are too thick to fold once. You select the size of each signature, or group of pages - 32 in the above case (which will be 8 pieces of paper when printed double sided). You also decide what to do with the last signature if it is not full length; it can be padded out to full length, or just to a multiple of four pages.
• Cut stacks . With this the sheets are printed, then cut in half. One half is lifted on to the other, and the book is now in order. This is normally double sided, but there is also the option to arrange for single sided stacks.

Handling fronts and backs

In an ideal world we will all have printers that can print on both sides of a sheet of paper. In this case the work of Create Booklet is done, since we can just print. However, many people will have to print the front and backs separately. A number of options will help you do this.

As noted earlier, you will probably need to experiment. Some laser printers are very unreliable when printed sheets are fed back into the printer; in some cases using a better quality of paper will help.

• You can keep the pages in order, but flip the backs upside down. Some double sided printing will need this.
• You can create a single document with all of the fronts, then all of the backs. This is convenient if you count an exact number of sheets into your printer; when the paper runs out, put back the printed sheets to print the back.
• You can create two documents, one with the fronts and one with the backs. This gives you the most flexibility.

Some printers do not centre pages when they print them, so the front and back do not line up. You can solve this by producing separate documents for front and back, then using the Trim And Shift facility to adjust one side.

Advanced users will also find they can use Trim And Shift to allow for creep , which is movement of page contents caused by the thickness of the paper.

Trim And Shift can also be used to ensure all pages are the same size before you make a booklet.

Choosing alignment

Pages don't always fit exactly onto the final sheets. This will always happen if the original document uses a mixture of page sizes, but it can also happen if you choose a specific sheet size that doesn't exactly hold two scaled pages.

This never happens if all the pages are the same size and you allow the size of sheets to be chosen automatically.

When pages don't fit exactly, you can choose how they are to be aligned. The final booklet screen offers three choices. A diagram on the screen helps to show the effect of each choice.

1.      Each page can be centred in its half of the page. This is usually the best choice. It means that when a page is under-sized it is likely to have an equal sized margin throughout.

2.      Each page can be pulled to the centre of the sheet. This is often thought of as the "spine" for saddle stitched or perfect bound. This is useful if you wish to trim the sheets after printing the pages.

A third option for page alignment was offered in version 1 of the plug-in. This believed not to be used any longer and has been removed, unless the Hide new features preference is selected.

Advanced booklet options

Quite Imposing 2.0 introduces a set of Advanced Options for booklet making. These are most likely to be used in professional printing. To switch them on, use the Show advanced options switch on the first booklet dialog.

• Create a new document . Normally Quite Imposing always makes a new document for a booklet. You can now turn this off. Use with care; if you save the booklet without changing the name, you will overwrite the original file.
• Do not scale pages (100% only) . Normally, Quite Imposing will scale pages to be as large as they can within the sheet size you select; they may be made larger or smaller. If you select this option, pages will not be scaled at all. White space will be added around the page if required, and the booklet will not be made if the pages don't fit (including keeping any space at the edge of the sheet).
• Space at edge of sheet . Normally, pages will be scaled right up to the edge of the sheet. This option allows you to reserve some extra white space that will not be touched. This is essential if using the next option.
• Add crop marks . You can add crop marks using all of the options available in n-Up Pages . Note that the crop marks are based on the sheet size, less any space at the edge of the sheet, unlike n-up, where they are based on the page size.
• Override common preferences . See Imposition Preferences .

If you switch off advanced options, all of these settings are automatically returned to their default values.