Fix CS3's Print Booklet !!

I ran into a variation of that problem. I believe it might be a bug in the scripting system itself. If I can repeat your experience, I'll report it to the Adobe scripting team. I even restructured the script to avoid the variation I ran into, but I didn't try the seqence you describe.

Dave

Dave

Hi, Dave:

Re the margins, I was a bit confused when I saw my pages all extending beyond the margins of the booklet. Perhaps it wouldn't matter to most people.

Assuming the only purpose of the document is to print it, since InD prints things that extend beyond the margins, I guess there is no "real" problem. OTOH, a 0" margin would work well (IMO).

I've discovered a small glitch. Let's say I open a document and immediately create the booklet. Then I close the booklet and delete its file from disk. All the while the original document remains open.

Then I try to run the script again: I get the message that unsaved documents cannot be processed. But Save is grayed out on the File menu since I haven't made any changes to the original. I tried Save As, specifying the same file name, but that doesn't fix the problem. To run the script again, I have to close the document and reopen it.

Do you know what is going on here?

Myrna,

Perhaps it would be best if I set the margin to zero because I certainly can't have margins that are different on the two-sides. Perhaps I could put guides where the margins were.

What I'm working on is a script to allow Edit Original to open the original document at the right page -- I can't believe that the product doesn't automatically do that.

If you're interested, I've been blogging on the subject here:

http://jsid.blogspot.com/

Dave

Dave:

This is WONDERFUL!!! THANK YOU.

If you are looking for suggestions for further development, one thing I noted relates to margins:

In my original document the pages are 4.75" x 4.75", with 0.25" margins all around. The newly created booklet has the correct size pages (9.5" wide x 4.75" high), but the margins are 0.5" all around. Setting the booklet margins to match the original would be a nice touch.

But of course there are "complications" if the margins vary from page to page in the original.

Handling creep would be a nice addition for long documents, of course.

I just posted a new script for CS3 only that takes advantage of the new ability to import pages from other documents. This first version is little more than a proof of concept and so it provides the bare minimum of functionality:

As long as your document has been saved and is a multiple of four pages long, the script produces something that looks a lot like the PageMaker booklets (i.e., single-sided document with double-sized pages with your pages in printer spreads.

The differences are:

1. I save the booklet file to the same folder as the original (to minimize the risk of the user saving over the orginal document and losing everything).
2. The pages are imported and linked rather than reshuffled. Thus, everything about the pages is perfectly preserved including footnote numbers, page breaks in text and what have you.

This also means that you can make the booklet as early in the process as you like and as you work on the original, the booklet will be automatically updated each time you open it (just don't change the number of pages -- if you do, you'll have to make a new booklet).

I've not given much thought to where to take this script in terms of new functionality. Obvious candidates are:

1. Supporting creep.
2. Supporting signatures.
3. Supporting InDesign Books.
4. Supporting Bleed and Slug (including at the binding).
5. Other kinds of n-up arrangements.

For now, you can give it a whirl by downloading:

http://pdsassoc.com/downloads/MakeBooklet.zip

After unzipping, put the .jsxbin file in the Scripts Panel folder in the Scripts folder of the Version 5.0 folder in the Adobe InDesign folder in Preferences. You can if you wish create subfolders in the Scripts Panel folder.

Access the Scripts panel via View/Automation.

To use the script, open a document that has a page length that is an exact multiple of four and then double-click the script's name in the panel.

Dave

You can print direct to PDF from print booklet, I imagine (I don't have CS3 yet) and perhaps save a step.

Nothing wrong with Dave's script though. I use and recommend it all the time. :)

Reply to #6<br /><br />Thanks, Dave. I'm not using a lot of features, page numbering among them, but I realize that a script would have to handle a lot of things that don't matter to me.<br /><br />Thanks for the info. It looks like the PDF export, rotate pages and print there, is the simplest solution until Adobe "fixes" Print Booklet (fingers crossed <g>).

It would be a lot of work. It would involve resolving all auto-page number symbols, for one thing.

What I do is use my script and then export the spreads to PDFs and print that.

Dave

Boy, that's an instant response!

Thanks.

PS:

If I can't resolve this booklet printing issue, I can't upgrade to CS3.

Do you know if you can have both InD CS2 and InD CS3 installed at the same time?