I’m looking for linux software or plugin that, in addition to putting the front and back cover side by side on the same leaf etc, allows me to subdivide a long pdf into sections of 8 leaves or so, which can each be printed and stapled, before final assembly of the sections into a pamphlet or booklet.
It would make me very happy if it runs locally, rather than being a web page.
Does anyone have experience with this kind of thing?
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splitting the PDFs and then using the tool you linked in your other comment may be the easiest.
I’ve done this sort of thing before but I just used libreoffice (which was a headache sometimes but did work out eventually, and supports printing multiple pages on each sheet ootb) and something like this: https://gist.github.com/UnrulyJuli3/0881f7b5ac0cba5329de580692ce1d69 to generate the order of the pages to print (which I could then paste into libreoffice’s print dialog)
I should add, the tool you linked in your other comment is, for all intents and purposes, an offline tool! It is all running in your browser to begin with, so if you want permanent access to it, just go to the author’s codeberg and download/extract the zip: https://codeberg.org/nashhigh/zine-arranger/archive/main.zip and then just open index.html in your browser to use it 100% offline
Edit: also, splitting the pdf into multiple sections can be done with a variety of CLI tools (or presumably other gui tools more manually). the only one that seems to have it out of the box is paid software (cpdf) but with extra steps it could be done with pdfjam or pdftk or others I think.
Wow, thank you! I appreciate you adding your mental bandwidth and experience to detangling this ball of yarn. It looks like I’m all set!
Thank you! I will need to do some experimenting in order to comprehend exactly how this is applied, but any local solution will make me feel powerful; more so if I become better familiar with my computer and its software in making it work.
COMRADE! GREAT NEWS! the zine-arranger tool you already linked has this capability already tucked away in the advanced options
I was looking at the code to see if I could hack it in there and realized it was already an option. Set “custom signature size” to however many sheets of paper per section you want. I’m using it locally rn! (as described in this comment)
I’m totally going to use this in the future for amateur bookbinding, so thank you for bringing this tool to my attention! Shit I might even give the author money, this is an EXCELLENT tool!
There are some tools which may help. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/16119560/how-to-join-multiple-pdf-pages-to-a-single-page
Thank you. These appear to be solutions to the problem of putting two portraits side-by-side on a landscape page, which is the first challenge for zines. The next is putting them in an order suitable for binding. There is at least one automated zine arranger that does these first two and has some options. I’m hoping to find one that has the option or re-ordering in increments, to support shorter sections that would be easier to staple when printed. Otherwise I will be looking into unlocking pdfs and manually splitting them into segments to be processed.
I see what you mean… I wonder if ImageMagick could do that. Let me know if you find a solution. Now i’m curious too so might mess around this weekend
I’ve used inkscape for one page zines and Scribus for longer ones. Print in adobe reader with booklet mode, make samples untill you get the rotation of pages right when printing to your target printer.
Is it possible to print PDF as booklet?
And if not please tell me what software you make the zines in.
This write-up details what zine printers are going for and has suggestions on how to go about it.
In my case I haven’t made any zines, I’m talking about the physical format. I suppose I could have asked this in c/technology, but I was picturing a zinemaking hobbyist being familiar with the technical issues. I’m actually wanting to print a programming manual from pdf and assemble it into a handbook.
I know of this web page that can do the arranging, but it assumes a pdf brief enough that it can all be stapled at once, and it’s online-only.
It seems that you have found a solution and if it works you should use it. However I think it is a little bit much for the simple task.
Outside of punk rock, zines are called “brochures”, “booklets” or sometimes “pamphlets” and they can be printed natively in many/most situations without need of special software. I actually don’t do it in linux much because my printer hates double sided printing but on both Mac and Windows you can organize it in “Page Setup” in most situations. I use the native Page Setup dialogue to convert full page PDFs to half-page zine-style documents for convenient reading. If you want to create a PDF you have to use a “print to PDF” option. It’s a little different depending on the environment though.
https://help.libreoffice.org/latest/en-US/text/swriter/guide/print_brochure.html - libreoffice
https://help.ubuntu.com/stable/ubuntu-help/printing-booklet.html - ubuntu general
https://www.arj.no/2026/02/12/print-booklets/
https://man.archlinux.org/man/pdfbook2.1.en - if you do want a cli tool
https://toggen.com.au/it-tips/gnu-linux/booklet-printing-in-linux - this person’s instructions are weird and probably not useful, but they are showing the Page Setup dialogues you should look for
If you have a letter sized document and print to a4/letter paper, the layout will be a little off because of the proportions of the proportions. So if there is for example, an image which is supposed to extend across 2 pages, it’ll have a gap in the middle.
If i had to do that I would use InDesign or Affinity, but they are both closed source. Affinity might be possible to run on Linux by jumping through some hoops. Scribus is an alternative to them that is free and open source. I’ve never used it, so I wouldn’t know how to do it or if it’s capable of what you need.
