Given a PDF file with multiple A5 size pages, all with potrait orientation where the total of pages are a multiple of four. This shell script (requires bash) will output a new PDF file suitable for printing on A4 paper with landscape orientation, arranging the source pages so that the printed A4 output can nicely turn into an A5 booklet by simpl…

buildbooklet.sh

#!/bin/bash

# In PDF world potrait A4 is 595ptx842pt

[ -z "$1" ] && echo "Please specify input file" && exit 1
[ ! -f "$1" ] && echo "File not found" && exit 1

# Get total number of pages
total_pages=`gs -dNODISPLAY $1 -c quit | awk '/Page/ { print NR; }' | wc -l`
echo "Total number of pages is $total_pages."

# Check if we can process PDF with $total_pages
r=$(($total_pages%4))
[ "$r" -ne "0" ] && echo "Can't process with $total_count number of pages" && exit 1

# Split the pages into separate PDF
for i in `seq $total_pages`; do
    echo -n "Processing page $i"
    idx[$(($i-1))]="$i"
    gs -q -o $i.pdf -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -dAutoRotatePages=/None -dFirstPage=$i -dLastPage=$i -g4210x5950 -f $1
    echo " [ Done ]"
done

# Arrange booklet pages
show_back_first=1
ori_len=$((${#idx[@]}))
count=0
echo -n "Arrange booklet pages"
while true; do
    #echo ${idx[@]}
    front=${idx[$count]}
    back=${idx[$(($ori_len-$count-1))]}
    pagename="page-$(($count+1)).pdf"
    pages[$count]=$pagename
    if [ "$show_back_first" -eq 1 ]; then
        pdfnup --nup 2 -q --landscape --outfile $pagename $back.pdf $front.pdf
        show_back_first=0
    else
        pdfnup --nup 2 -q --landscape --outfile $pagename $front.pdf $back.pdf
        show_back_first=1
    fi
    unset idx[$count]
    unset idx[$(($ori_len-$count-1))]
    count=$(($count+1))
    arr_len=${#idx[@]}
    if [ "$arr_len" -eq 0 ]; then
        break
    fi
done
echo " [ Done ]"

# Generate combined pages
echo -n "Generate combine pages"
[ -f "booklet.pdf" ] && rm booklet.pdf
pdftk ${pages[@]} cat output risalah.pdf
echo " [ Done ]"

# Cleaning up
echo -n "Cleaning up"
rm -f [0-9]*.pdf
rm -f page-*.pdf
echo " [ Done ]"

exit 0

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