[texhax] Is LaTex the product for me?

[Susan Dittmar]

> 2011/2/6 Dennis & Kathy travel <gomgom at verizon.net>
> >  I am new to LaTex. I am trying to create a mini-pocket book of the state
> > constitution to share with others (free of course). I need 4 pages to fit on
> > each printed page. The bottom 2 pages on the printed page need to be upside
> > down. The pages need to be organized so that when the printed page is folded
> > in half to to bottom, cut along the edges, folded in the center, yielding a
> > pocket book in correct order.

Quoting Uwe Ziegenhagen (ziegenhagen at gmail.com):
> the package to look for is called pgfpages. I once did a pocketmod using
> this package.

@Uwe:
I disagree. Pgfpages can resize, turn and position logical pages on one
physical paper, and I use it a lot and love it. But if I understood the
documentation of pgfpages correctly, pgfpages cannot suspend shipout of
one logical page until the second (or a later) physical page. Thus, if it
deals with chunks of eight logical pages, those eight pages have to be
printed on one physical paper, and cannot be split on two physical papers
(paper sides) or more.

@Dennis:
LaTeX *can* do what you requested, using the package pdfpages. In fact, it
can rearrange the pages of any pdf document (not just those created by
LaTeX) for a booklet like the one you indicated.
So you would first generate a PDF document with the contents you want to
publish, just like any other booklet (i.e. without the rearrangement of
pages), with a page size of quarter of a letter paper. (For setting page
size you could for example use the package 'geometry'). Then, in another
latex run using a very short second document, you include the result of
this first step, rearranging the pages. For more information, see the
documentation of the 'pdfpages' package. And if that does not help you,
keep asking :-)

Hope this helps,

	Susan