1man(1) pdfxup man page man(1)
2
6 pdfxup - n-up tool with reduced margins
7
9 pdfxup [OPTIONS] [FILE]
10
12 pdfxup creates a PDF document where each page is obtained by combining
13 several pages of a PDF file given as output. The important feature of
14 pdfxup, compared to similar programs, is that it tries to compute the
15 (global) bounding box of the input PDF file, in order to remove the
16 margins and to keep the text only. Instead of having the font size di‐
17 vided by 2 (for the case of 2-up output), in some case you may end up
18 with almost the same font size as in the original document (as is the
19 case for a default 'article' document produced by LaTeX).
20 pdfxup uses ghostscript for computing the maximal bounding box of (some
22 of) the pages of the document, and then uses pdflatex (with graphicx
23 package) in order to produce the new document.
24
26 pdfxup accepts numerous options. The most important ones are:
27 -x m, --columns m
29 sets the number of columns of the output file (default 2);
30 -y n, --rows n
32 sets the number of lines of the output file (default 1);
33 -nup mxn, --nup mxn
35 sets the number of rows and columns of the output file (default
36 2x1);
37 -l (0|1), --landscape, --portrait
39 sets orientation of paper (of final document);
40 -cf file, --config file, --mode file
42 reads file (with extension .xup) and uses options defined in
43 that file (see below for details about .xup files). All options
44 are processed in the order the appear on the command-line, so
45 that it is possible to modify the options set in the configura‐
46 tion file (and it is even possible to include several configura‐
47 tion files, the later one overwriting the options set by the
48 previous ones). Files are looked-up using kpsewhich (if avail‐
49 able).
50 -b (le|se), --booklet (le|se)
52 configure for printing as a booklet. Value 'le' (which is the
53 default value when -b is used with no argument) means that two-
54 sided printing is in 'long-edge' mode (you turn from one page to
55 the next along the long edge of the paper). 'se' is the 'short-
56 edge' option.
57 -c, --clip, -nc, --no-clip
59 clip (or don't clip) pages to the computed bounding box. By de‐
60 fault, content is clipped, to avoid overlap between neighbour‐
61 ing pages. With --no-clip, anything outside the bounding box
62 will be displayed.
63 -o file, --output file
65 name of output file.
66 -i ask before overwriting output file.
68 -ow overwrite output file without asking.
70 -ps s, --paper s
72 sets paper size (default a4). The name must be known by package
73 geometry (more precisely, "<s>paper" should be defined in that
74 package).
75 -fw d, --framewidth d
77 width of the frame around each page (default 0.4pt). Set to 0pt
78 to have no frame at all.
79 -tf [0|1], --tight-frame [0|1]
81 whether the frame should be tight around the page, leaving hori‐
82 zontal white space outside the frame, or should be wide and span
83 the whole available width.
84 -im d, --innermargins d
86 inner margin between frame and page (default 5pt).
87 -m d, --margins d
89 margin of pages of the new document (default 5pt).
90 -is d, --intspaces d
92 space between different pages (default 1pt).
93 -p list, --pages list
95 only consider sublist of pages of input document. List is a
96 comma-separated list of pages or ranges pages of the form a-b; a
97 can be omitted to start from first page, and b can be omitted to
98 end at the last page. Therefore, "-p -" (which is the default)
99 includes all pages. Also allows modulo, so that "-p 0%2" would
100 include only even-numbered pages.
101 -bb list, --bb list
103 only consider sublist of pages of input document for computing
104 bounding box.
105 -nobb list, --no-bb list
107 omit list of pages of input document from computation of bound‐
108 ing box.
109 -g, --get-bb
111 only compute (and output) bounding box. Will not produce any
112 output file.
113 -kbb, --keep-bb
115 do not compute bounding box, preserve current margins.
116 -s x y W H, --set-bb x y W H
118 set the bounding box to the given values. Values are in pt; the
119 first two elements correspond to the lower left corner, while
120 the last two represent the width and height of the part to be
121 displayed.
122 -w file, --watermark file
124 use file as background watermark. file can be any format ac‐
125 cepted by pdflatex (e.g. png or pdf). If file is a multipage PDF
126 file, page n of the watermark file is used with page n of the
127 input file, and the last page of the watermark file is repeated
128 if the input file has more pages.
129 -wp p, --watermark-period p
131 repeat the last p pages of the watermark file instead of only
132 the last one.
133 -d, --debug
135 debug mode: keep intermediary files.
136 -col, --column-mode, --vertical
138 fill in pages top-down first (instead of the default left-to-
139 right mode). By default, pages are inserted from left to right,
140 until the line is full; with this option, pages are inserted
141 from top to bottom, until the column is full. See option -bal
142 below for examples of both options.
143 -row, --row-mode, --horizontal
145 fill in pages left to right (which is the default mode).
146 -bal, --balance-last
148 balance last page: when using column mode, the pages are filled
149 in from top to bottom, and the last page is no exception. Still,
150 it may be prefered that the columns in the last page remains
151 "balanced", which is what this option achieves. Symmetrically,
152 in row mode, this option would balance the rows.
153 --------- ---------
154 row, no-balance | 1 2 3 | column, no-balance | 1 4 7 |
155 (default mode) | 4 5 6 | | 2 5 8 |
156 | 7 8 9 | | 3 6 9 |
157 --------- ---------
158 --------- ---------
159 |10 11 12 | |10 13 |
160 |13 14 | |11 14 |
161 | | |12 |
162 --------- ---------
163 --------- ---------
165 row, balance | 1 2 3 | column, balance | 1 4 7 |
166 | 4 5 6 | | 2 5 8 |
167 | 7 8 9 | | 3 6 9 |
168 --------- ---------
169 --------- ---------
170 |10 11 | |10 12 14 |
171 |12 13 | |11 13 |
172 |14 | | |
173 --------- ---------
174 -V [0-3], --verbose [0-3]
177 select verbosity (default: 1).
178 -q, --quiet
180 run quietly (equiv. '-V 0').
181 -v, --version
183 print version number and exit.
184 -h, --help
186 print help message and exit.
187
189 Configuration files (extension .xup) are bash scripts used to set some
190 variables. If option "--config-file <file>" (or equivalent) is used,
191 <file> is looked up with kpsewhich first, if it contains no '/'. If
192 kpsewhich does not find it, then pdfxup checks if the file exists (us‐
193 ing 'test -e') before sourcing it (the PATH variable will not be used
194 to find it).
195 The script should only set some internal variables of pdfxup, such as
197 NB_ROWS, NB_COLUMNS, LANDSCAPE (to set up a predefined layout). It can
198 be used to set the bounding box, but it is often better to compute it
199 on the first few pages of the document. Here are some examples of
200 lines that can be put in a .xup file:
201 NB_COLUMNS=1
203 set the number of columns to 1
204 NB_ROWS=2
206 set the number of rows to 2
207 LANDSCAPE=0
209 set portrait mode
210 KEEP_ORIG_BBOX=1
212 do not crop margins
213 SET_BBOX="75 47 540 755"
215 set bounding box: lower left=(75,47); upper right=(540,755)
216 TIGHT_FRAME=1
218 set tight frames around pages
219 INNER_MARGINS=10pt
221 set margin around each page (inside the frame) to 10pt
222 INTERM_SPACES=10pt
224 set space between pages to 10pt
225 FRAME_WIDTH=2mm
227 set frame width to 2mm
228 Other available variables can be found in the setdefaultvalues func‐
231 tion.
232
235 # pdfxup file.pdf
236 produces 2-up pdf file from file.pdf.
237 # pdfxup -bb 1-4 file.pdf
239 same behaviour, but computes the bounding box only using the
240 first 4 pages (this saves time when processing long documents).
241 # pdfxup -b -o booklet.pdf file.pdf
243 same behaviour, but creates a booklet (as booklet.pdf).
244 # pdfxup -kbb -x1 -y2 -l0 beamer-frames.pdf
246 arranges 2 beamer frames per page (not reducing margins).
247 # pdfxup --mode beamer2 beamer-frames.pdf
249 arranges PDF pages according to beamer2.xup configuration file.
250 # pdfxup -kbb -x2 -y2 -l beamer-frames.pdf:1-12,15-19
252 arranges 4 beamer frames per page (not reducing margins), in‐
253 cluding only frames 1 to 12 and 15 to 19.
254
256 gs(1), pdflatex(1)
257
259 Nicolas Markey (pdfxup@markey.fr)
2602.10 25 april 2021 man(1)