[softwarelist] Re: OPro script prpagew() (RISC OS)
- From: Gavin Crawford <gav@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: davidpilling@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 21 Aug 2016 17:16:16 +0100
In message <da35a5f3-7ac5-665f-739d-66baa9e9aad1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
David Pilling <david@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hi Gavin,
On 16/08/2016 11:07, Gavin Crawford wrote:
It's been many years since I last attempted to understand the imposit
scripts and even now I feel a nervous twitch developing in a Chief
Inspector Dreyfus manner (from Pink Panther films) ;-) ;-)
I wonder if anyone (any platform) has made imposition simple.
There are two aspects of imposition. One from a user's point of view
selecting the right 'layout' for the required end result, and the
other from a programming/instructional angle of setting up new
imposition layouts. It's such a complex process with so many varying
options such as the number of pages on a sheet, position and angle of
each page, sequence of the pages etc etc that I doubt it could ever be
simple. Choosing (understanding) the correct 'layout' is difficult
enough from a user's perspective never mind actually constructing the
layouts.
I often use an acrobat plug-in called 'Quite Imposing Plus'
(www.quite.com/imposing/) that allows all sorts of complex imposition
with PDFs. It's over 700GBP so not cheap for casual use, but
considerably cheaper than some of the other professional options
around. It breaks down the tasks of imposition into separate parts and
is controlled through a mass of dialogue boxes with options and
settings for each action such as create booklet, n-up, step and
repeat, trim and shift etc. Once you have all the steps necessary,
these can be grouped into a single sequence to be played back later on
other files. It is good at what it does, but it does have a steep
learning curve.
I know that when I set out to make it programmable my heart sank at the
complexity; John Wallace, responsible for the documentation at Beebug,
groaned at the the mention of it.
I can imagine. No easy task coding it, or explaining it.
We have talked of a graphical interface, I can't recall who was doing
that, but he left the RISC OS world.
Some imposition is complicated - easy enough to say you want N pages on
a sheet of paper, but that's only the start.
I have often pondered on how it could be improved, but it's such a
complex issue that it makes my brain hurt just wondering how the
interface would work.
Back to the subject of OPro's script functions. I'm not actually
creating a new imposition format, but hooking into the print sequence
to add a TrimBox and BleedBox, using the pdfmark PostScript operator,
after any imposition has been done.
I've managed to calculate the page area and the bleed area using a
combination of functions, prpageshiftx, prworkw, papermarkx,
paperbleed etc, but I need to do further tests with different
imposition formats and different combinations of crops/reg marks and
bleed sizes. Actually I've just envisaged a problem if the bleed size
was greater than the crops size (at the moment I'm expecting it to be
less than the size of the marks).
I don't suppose OPro already has these values stored in some variables
that are accessible to scripts, but not mentioned in the manual?
Gavin
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