A grid of images to fill A4 -paper for economic printing with some space for scissors

Question

I want to print a A4 paper full of the same QR image. I want more elegant way to this answer here, yes I can get it working like that but I want to leave just enough space for scissors and no space near the edges and equal spacing (and is it possible to do that with for -loop or otherwise simpler?) -- possible?

Answer 1

Look, ma! No loops! :)

Borrowed from the TeXbook, exercise 21.8 (p. 225).

\documentclass{minimal}
\usepackage[a4paper,margin=2mm]{geometry}
\usepackage{graphicx}

\sbox0{%
  \includegraphics{image}%
  \kern2mm
  \vrule width 0pt depth 2mm}

\setlength{\parindent}{0pt}

\begin{document}

\null
\cleaders\hbox to\textwidth{\leaders\copy0\hfill}\vfill

\end{document}

Answer 2

Here is one way using the forloop package which implements an elementary nested/recursive for loop using counters. Given some counter <cnt>, the interface

\forloop[<step>]{<cnt>}{<start>}{<condition>}{<loop content>}

initializes <cnt> to <start> and executes <loop content> until <condition> is met. An optional first parameter <step> (default is 1) can be set to modify the counter step size:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[margin=2cm,a4paper]{geometry}% http://ctan.org/pkg/geometry
\usepackage{forloop}% http://ctan.org/pkg/forloop
\usepackage{pst-barcode}% http://ctan.org/pkg/pst-barcode
\pagestyle{empty}% No page headers/footers
\begin{document}
\setlength{\baselineskip}{2cm}%
\newcounter{qrcodesA}\newcounter{qrcodesB}%
\forloop{qrcodesA}{0}{\value{qrcodesA}<12}{% Rows
  \noindent%
  \forloop{qrcodesB}{0}{\value{qrcodesB}<9}{% Columns
    \psbarcode{tex.stackexchange.com}{}{qrcode}\hspace{2cm}}\hspace*{\fill}\\%
  }%
}
\end{document}

Using \psbarcode directly creates a dimensionless object (width and height of 0pt). The spacing of 2cm is arbitrary, as is the setting for \baselineskip. You can modify this to suit your scissor-cutting expertise.

This requires a latex->dvips->ps2pdf or xelatex compilation sequence.

Answer 3

You can loop using Knuth's \loop and \repeat. Here some minimal code. You will need to experiment with the gutter between the images, as well as the numbers and scaling of the image.

\documentclass[a4paper]{article}
\usepackage[top=.1cm, left=0.1cm,bottom=.1cm,right=0.1cm]{geometry}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\def\qcode{\includegraphics{./graphics/qrcode}}
\parindent0pt
\pagestyle{empty}
\begin{document}
\newcounter{cnt}
\setcounter{cnt}{0}
\loop
\qcode
\stepcounter{cnt}
\ifnum\thecnt<185
\repeat
\end{document}

Here is the result. You can also print the qrcode with LaTeX using pstricks.

Answer 4

run with xelatex or latex->dvips->ps2pdf

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{multido,pst-barcode}
\def\xstrut{\rule{0pt}{2cm}}
\parindent=0pt
\pagestyle{empty}
\begin{document}
\multido{\iA=0+1}{54}{% 
  \makebox[2cm]{\xstrut\psbarcode{tex.stackexchange.com}{}{qrcode}} }
\end{document}

Answer 5

One way would be to compute the number that can fit on one line based on the \WidthOfImage, and the number of rows based on the \HeightOfImage (adjusting for the spacing required by the scissors):

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage[demo]{graphicx}
\usepackage[showframe]{geometry}
\usepackage{pgf}
\usepackage{pgffor}

\newlength{\Separation}%
\setlength{\Separation}{0.1cm}% Space for the "scissors"

\newlength{\WidthOfImage}%
\setlength{\WidthOfImage}{2.0cm}%

\newlength{\HeightOfImage}%
\setlength{\HeightOfImage}{2.0cm}%

\pgfmathtruncatemacro{\NumberOfRows}{\textheight/(\HeightOfImage+\Separation)}%
\pgfmathtruncatemacro{\NumberOfColumns}{\textwidth/(\WidthOfImage+\Separation)}%

\begin{document}
%NumberOfRows = \NumberOfRows\par
%NumberOfColumns = \NumberOfColumns\par
%
\foreach \x in {1,...,\NumberOfRows}{\noindent%
    \foreach \y in {1,...,\NumberOfColumns}{%
        \includegraphics[width=\WidthOfImage,height=\HeightOfImage]{image}%
        \hspace{\Separation}%
    }%
    \newline%
}%
\end{document}