---
author: ''
category: ''
date: 2010/08/13 18:46
description: ''
link: ''
priority: ''
slug: BB909
tags: nerdness, open source, programming, python
title: Things I learned publishing a magazine
type: text
updated: 2010/08/13 18:46
url_type: ''
---
Today at 00:00:00 GMT-3 `PET: Python entre todos <http://revista.python.org.ar>`_ was indeed launched, in time (arbitrary but forced) and in budget ($0).

So, what did I learn? I learned a lot!

* The only thing you need to publish an e-mag is time and content.

* Time can be converted into content, but if you write everything yourself it's a blog, not a magazine. Luckily, PET found great contributors.

* If you want utilitarian design, rst2pdf can do the job

* In fact, it can do it better than other tools in some ways

  + I can push a fixed version of the PDFs in 5 minutes for all layouts. How much would it take me using Scribus or other DTP? In a magazine where correctness matters, that's a big deal.

  + TOCs are better than in most amateur PDF magazines I've seen. The in-content-TOC is clickable, and the PDF TOC is perfect.

  + Page numbers in the PDF TOC make sense (no, the cover is not page 1)

  + I am producing 6 PDF versions: A4(bw, colour), A5(bw,colour), Booklet(bw, colour) and I could add any other I want in a few minutes.

* I learned about PDF imposition!

Let's explain the last one:

Suppose you want to print a small booklet, and you have 32 pages of content. How do you do that?

The easiest way is to print it 2-up double-sided in A4 paper so that you can stack the pages, fold them down the middle, staple them, and get a nice A5 booklet.

The problem is that the page ordering is hard to get right. For example, for a 4-page booklet, you need to print one A4 page with pages 4-1 on one side and 2-3 on the other. For an 8 page booklet it's 8-1,2-7,3-6,4-5.

Lucklily there's a way to get this done automatically:

1. Install podofo
3. Get booklet-A4.plan (see below)
2. Run this::

       podofoimpose my-A5-pages.pdf my-booklet.pdf booklet-A4.plan lua

booklet-A4.plan is this:

.. code-block:: lua

    ---Generic Booklet (A4)
    ---
    ---It is said generic as it will try to determine
    ---automatically how to fit the booklet onto A4
    ---paper sheets, scaling pages if necessary.
    ---it is well suited for office documents for
    ---which you do not care too much about resulting
    ---imposition artefacts since it manages to save
    ---paper!
    ---
    -- print("Booklet")
    -- We output an A4 booklet
    PageWidth = 595.27559
    PageHeight = 841.88976

    print("PageCount",PageCount)

    -- We assume that H > W
    -- Argh, we now can do better since we have "if" ;-)
    -- Scale = PageHeight / (2*SourceWidth)
    if(SourceWidth <= SourceHeight)
    then
    --  If you A5 pages are not really A5, uncomment the next line
    --	Scale = PageHeight / (2*SourceWidth)
        Scale = 1
        rot = 90
            xof = SourceHeight
            yofRA = 0
            yofRB = SourceWidth
            yofVA = 0
            yofVB = SourceWidth
    else
    --  If you A5 pages are not really A5, uncomment the next line
    --	Scale = PageHeight / (2*SourceHeight)
        Scale = 1
        rot = 0
            xof = 0;
            yofRA = 0
            yofRB = SourceHeight
            yofVA = SourceHeight
            yofVB = 0
    end

    do
        rest = PageCount % 4
        totp = PageCount
        if rest ~= 0
            then
            totp = totp + ( 4 - rest)
            end
        inc = 0
        count = 0
        imax = totp/4
        while count < imax
            do
    -- 		We assume that podofoimpose will discard invalid records
    -- 		such as those with source page greater than PageCount
    -- 		print(totp, inc, rot, xof,yofRA, yofRA, yofVA, yofVB)
    -- Recto
            PushRecord(totp - inc , inc + 1 , rot, xof , yofRA)
            PushRecord(inc + 1 , inc + 1 , rot, xof , yofRB)
    -- Verso
            PushRecord(inc + 2 , inc + 2 , rot, xof , yofVA)
            PushRecord(totp-(inc + 1) , inc + 2 , rot, xof, yofVB)

            count = count + 1
            inc = inc + 2
            end
    end

That code is taken from here: http://www.oep-h.com/impose/

And voilá, you get a scrambled PDF with the pages in exactly the right order (and empty pages added as needed).