Information on Printing PDF files:

Information on Printing PDF files

This document provides information on printing PDF files, with several logical pages to one physical page.

Using a UNIX workstation or X-terminal:

From a UNIX workstation or X-terminal, the task is rather simple.

1. Start the Acroread PDF reader by issuing the command acroread on the command line.

2. Open the PDF file which you wish to print by using the open command on the file menu.

3. Select the print command from the file menu.

4. In the printer command window, type mpage -Pprintername, with printername replaced by the name of the printer to which you wish to print.

5. For further details on using mpage (for example, to print two logical pages per physical page), consult the UNIX man page for mpage.

Using a PC:

Unfortunately, mpage chokes on PostScript files generated by a PC. (If you find a way around this problem, let us know.) Thus, it is necessary to use other software. Here is what you will need.

The software GSview is needed. It should be available on the laboratory PC's, but the version may be old and not work correctly. Information on the most recent versions may be obtained at http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/.

The program psnup, which is part of the psview package, is also needed. Information on obtainining this software, including binaries for Windows 95 and NT, may be found at http://www.dcs.ed.ac.uk/home/ajcd/psutils/index.html.

Here is the strategy to follow:

Open the PDF file using Gsview. Use the utility to create a "vanilla" PostScript file, with the Extract option from the Files menu.
Use the psnup utility to create a multipage version of the postscript file. Note that psnup is a command-line utility, and has no Windows interface. The manual page for psnup is available at the above web page. Basically, the form which you will need is

Psnup -4 input_file.ps output_file.ps

Replace input_file.ps with the name of the source file, and output_file.ps with the name of the target file. If you want, for example, two logical pages per physical, replace the -4 with -2. You now have a PostScript file which may be printed and/or viewed with GSView. To generate a corresponding PDF file requires Adobe Acrobat Distiller or a similar utility, which is commercial software.

I will try to arrange to have this software installed on the laboratory PC's, and will report back when I have succeeded.

Using a Mac:

You are on your own!