Printing double faced 2 sheets per page in landscape mode.

[ozfrog]

Hello,

A bit long winded, but not as long as the time I've wasted trying top get this happening.

A 83 page .pdf, Mac OS 10.14.6 => HP Envy 5540; Acrobat Pro 10.1.16

I wanted to make a flight manual from this .pdf, but in A5 format and double sided.

Printing 2 pages per A4 in landscape mode.

So on any given page - I want an odd numbered page on left and next odd numbered page on the right.

On the back of same page I want an even numbered page that follows sequentially the 1st odd numbered page on the left, and the following even numbered page on the right. Then cut the A4 in two.

In order to get a book like form with sequentially numbered pages in the right order as I turn.

First try - from the Adobe printing drop down - Booklet form - this looks ideal.

Result - the "recto" - odd numbered page printed OK, but the "verso" - even numbered page is upsidedown and the order is reversed. ------ Much fiddling and hair tearing later --------

Last try - after much tweaking the Adobe print menu and the Mac OS menu - I deleted all the odd numbered pages in the master file, then printed the even numbered pages from the Mac OS printer drop down. Then from the master file, deleted all the even numbered pages and printed off the odd numbered ones. Impossible to feed the odd numbered pages into the printer and get the even numbered pages to print right side up and behind their repective odd numbered pages correcxtly. Ended up printing them to blank A4s - cut and paste.

It shouldn't be this hard. 🙂

Ozfrog.

ecnalnixod@gmail.com

[ls_rbls]

have you been able to customize the print settings  from the print driver application managed by the your operating system rather than using Adobe Acrobat?

Also, I was windering if you've been able to create any pre-flight profiles and apply your desired presets  using the print production tool.

[ozfrog]

Hello and thanks for the feedback. 

A couple of acronyms. MPA => MacOS printer application. 

APA => Adobe printer application. 

Your first point - as I couldn’t see any choice for printing 2 pages of the .pdf to a lendscape A4 in the APA, I had to go to the MPA to select this. When I hit print from the MPA it sends me automatically back to the APA from where I hit print again. 

Your second point. I haven’t looked at this for deadline reasons, but if you think my answer lies within, I’ll certainly check it out n for future use. 

Season’s greetings. Lance. 

[ls_rbls]

Hi,

Please disregard my guidance posted in my last reply; even though the preflight tool us useful in running analysis for a PDF document I don't see it fit for your case.

I went ahead and practiced with your shared pdf file in my Windows 10 using Adobe Acrobat Pro DC.

From the sources that I followed it seems that the key in making a  PDF booklet  is to apply a combination of steps from both the Acrobat application and the printer application, to include  knowing how to manually stack the first set of  front side printed pages and then apply the second part of the printing process for the backside.

I found a series of links that you may find useful below:

https://statusq.org/archives/2019/01/11/8893/ 

https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/kb/print-booklets-acrobat-reader.html 

https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/using/ways-print-pdfs.html#print_a_booklet 

Third party app for macOS is offered as a solution in this old thread:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/macintoshhowto.com/pages-and-publishing/how-to-print-a-booklet.html%3fa... 

Interesting approach here duplexing:

https://help.gnome.org/users/gnome-help/stable/printing-booklet-duplex.html.en 

The next two videos illustrates better all the theory in a very easy format:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=v_IHweGS1ZA 

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wPjgriZYWsw 

Hope this helps.

[ozfrog]

Hi,

The second video looks good.
I didn’t see how he set up the “two pages per A4” but the result looks correct.

Lance Dixon.

[ls_rbls]

the video right below that one is in arabic, I didnt posted it thinking it was hard to understand but the guy gets that part covered on how to stack the pages in the printer.

[ozfrog]

Sorry, I meant the LAST video in English. Nailed it. Thanks for all your time and trouble, much appreciated b

[ls_rbls]

Yes, you're welcome.

[ozfrog]

Got it 👍

Only two tries 

1. 

This gave the following order (UD = upside down)

1.0 - 1.6 UD, 1.5 UD, 1.3, 1.4, 1.2 UD, 1.1 UD, 1.8

Try No 2.

Booklet with perfect page order and orientation.

I think the major issue with this was the "to-and-fro" between the Adobe Printing menu and the MacOS printing menu. Sticking with just the Adobe menu seems advisable.

Cheers

Lance

[ls_rbls]

Have you been able to sleep ??  🙂

[ozfrog]

I 'll sleep better tonight now this is sorted 😙

I can't let it go, must be an Aries thing or maybe the fact that I've been involved in IT since IBM 1401 / 1440 series.

(Tape Ops, System Ops, Punched cards, 8 hour runs doing Ford parts sorts, flow charts, source decks, object decks, dummy data runs, real data runs, sign offs)  

and I really can't abide sloppy programming and bloatware either 🙂

Cheers

Lance

[ls_rbls]

Punch cards? Wow!

I remember some of those still in use  as I was growing up. Were you able to conserve your hearing?   

There was this old schooler keypunch operator I knew once that he was basically deaf. It was basically impossible to be able to listen to each other talk at normal voice level without yelling when all thos machines were opeating at full speed.

As joke, he used to drop on the ground the heavy solid metal punch card trays.

And as he did that he would reveal certain joy in his face while observing your facial expressions produced by the ear-splitting  resonance of the card tray bouncing a few times off the ground (which used to add up even more to the unpleasant noisy room). 

[ozfrog]

Hi,

Ah the punch-card room. Always deafening - we avoided it as much as possible. Our programming quarters were up on the 4th floor so they didn’t bother us normally. 80 column cards were punched then verified by re-punching - so double the noise volume.
They also had a nasty habit of getting stuck / torn in the card readers. On my first job, we always had back-up object decks, but later, working for a service facility, if you had a card destroyed on site, that was the end of it. They were pretty heavy too - a couple of full boxes were about all I could manage.



and these! While I was looking for these, I saw a question from someone - « What’s a main frame? » - Now I do feel ancient 🙂
cheers

[ls_rbls]

The good old Apollo missions  and IBM glory days  ...I guess.

And what about the line printers used with those mainframes?

I remember some business owners used to have a storage room almost as big as the mainframe room just to be able to pile up boxes of that fanfold paper with the green and white stripes on it.

Tearing the perforated edges on both margins of the fanfolded sheets was as tedius as reading data line by line.

I think that learning how to replace an empty box of fanfold paper with a new one (while the printer wouldn't pause or wait for you),  became  an Artistic vocational  ability for the operators , specially learning to figure out how to untwist the  printed sheets of paper that used to spread all over the floor around the line printer  if a long print job was left unattended  overnight.

Operators had to  manually feed the paper while the printing process was still going; that to me was a skillset by itself.

They used to keep a few boxes right next to the printer at all times just for that purpose.

Everything was rough and heavy back then.

Nowadays  people just build great muscle groups around their thumbs... and that's about it.

All that typing with two thumbs using a virtual keypad in mobile devices with touch screens has contributed to  forget very quickly  all of  these great historical memories.

I guess the Next level of computing would be just to look at your screen in your mobile device, and just by staring at your mobile device screen, your text messaging, printing, and emails apps will execute your wishes without the need to even use your thumbs in a mobile device.

I may even add to this  non-related topic   that the IT generations that forked out of those days have taken for granted how  it all began.

Consequently, these same younger datacenter and cloud computing IT crowds lost the ability to acknowledge with a humble stance just how complex  the very basic tasks were back then... even printing on a sheet of paper.

So with all that said, I salute you Lance, and it is great to see individuals like yourself still  in the battle.

Here I found two  very cool videos to conmemorate:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uFQ3sajIdaM 

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=45X4VP8CGtk#searching