Conversion Tools ⇒ Saving paper by splitting single page into two halves

[jinkx]

Many documents occupy only one page of a paper and need to be replicated and distributed. Example might be tutorial sheets in universities. So often the back side of the paper gets wasted.

A solution for this might be to cram tutorials for two students in a single paper. Suppose tutorial one consists of 10 bullets. First five bullets will be put in page 1 first half. First five bullets will also be put in page 1 second half. There will be a line in the middle where the paper can be cut. Similarly, on page 2 there will be last five bullets, a cutting line and the same last five bullets again.

Is this trivial to do? Both the upper and the bottom parts that are separated by the cutting line need to be identical.

[Johannes_B]

Welcome,

wouldn't it be easier to just print on smaller paper? FOr example a5 instead of a4 and the according option to package geometry?

[jinkx]

Most of the times only one type of paper is available with the one who prints stuff when you give him your money. And that is A4. Maybe in developed countries people have the luxury of choosing between many sizes of paper, but that is not the case everywhere.

[jinkx]

I am not an expert in Tex, and I can't think of any way that each half will have both header and footer of their own. There is minipage but that is generally used once the body of the document starts, and also demands that the content is manually written for each minipage.

If the solution of the problem is not possible using Latex, some pointers as to how to do that using PlainTex macros would be great. I don't really plan to read the Texbook to figure it out.

[rais]

Most of the times only one type of paper is available with the one who prints stuff when you give him your money. And that is A4.

well then, perhaps you could use psnup/pdfnup, possibly the pdfpages package to create the same A5 file twice on a single A4 paper.
Personally, in this case I'd use a wrapper file (A4), where I'd put the real A5 page twice, just using the graphicx package, e.g.,

Code: Select all

\documentclass[a4paper, landscape]{article}
\usepackage[margin=0pt]{geometry}
\usepackage[english]{babel}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage{eso-pic}
\begin{filecontents}{\jobname-slv.tex}
\documentclass[a5paper]{article}
\usepackage{geometry}
\usepackage[english]{babel}
\usepackage{blindtext}
\begin{document}
\blindtext[3]
\end{document}
\end{filecontents}
\begin{document}
\AddToShipoutPictureBG{%
  \AtPageCenter{%
      \rule[-0.5\paperheight]{0.2pt}{\paperheight}%
  }%
}%
\noindent\IfFileExists{\jobname-slv.pdf}{%
\includegraphics[height=\textheight]{\jobname-slv}%
\includegraphics[height=\textheight]{\jobname-slv}%
}{\typeout{Please run pdfLaTeX on \jobname-slv.tex}}
\end{document}

Please note that the wrapper file has no margins on its own here, it rather expects to find them in the -slv (as in slave) file.

KR
Rainer

[jinkx]

I didn't know about the eso-pic package. Also, the idea of importing pdfs as a picture is good. And I guess for printing on both sides of the paper, page can be specified in the includegraphics command.

Code: Select all

\documentclass[a4paper, landscape]{article}
\usepackage[margin=0pt]{geometry}
\usepackage[english]{babel}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage{eso-pic}
\begin{filecontents}{\jobname-slv.tex}
  \documentclass[a5paper]{article}
  \usepackage{geometry}
  \usepackage[english]{babel}
  \usepackage{blindtext}
  \begin{document}
  \blindtext[10][3]
\end{document}
\end{filecontents}
\begin{document}
\AddToShipoutPictureBG{%
  \AtPageCenter{%
    \rule[-0.5\paperheight]{0.2pt}{\paperheight}%
  }%
}%
\noindent\IfFileExists{\jobname-slv.pdf}{%
  \includegraphics[height=\textheight,page=1]{\jobname-slv}%
  \includegraphics[height=\textheight,page=1]{\jobname-slv}%
  \newpage
  \includegraphics[height=\textheight,page=2]{\jobname-slv}%
  \includegraphics[height=\textheight,page=2]{\jobname-slv}%
}{\typeout{Please run pdfLaTeX on \jobname-slv.tex}}
\end{document}