Leaflet margins to compensate printer margins

Question

Leaflet provides a convenient way to build flyers in LaTeX. However, I've run into a problem where I could not figure out how to adjust the page margins in order to compensate for the printer margins.

Leaflet produces 6 narrow pages, so that combining 3 of them next to each other would form a single A4 page (filled edge to edge). Thus, combining these 6 pages 3x2 produces two A4 pages. Document style options combine and nocombine control this process.

The documentation points out to the \setmargins macro as a way to control page margins. However, this macro controls margins for each of 6 pages individually. In order to compensate for the printer margins it is necessary to adjust margins of the combined A4 page.

The geometry package options also effects each narrow page individually, thus not achieving the required effect.

What is the proper way to adjust margins of the combined A4 page when using leaflet? Is there any other than page margins modification way to compensate for the printer margins?

Answer 1

My suggestion here is to use a 2-step process.

1. Create your leaflet as usual using the leaflet documentclass. Assume this is called leaflet.pdf, and consists of the 6-page (2 logical pages) layout, similar to the leaflet package documentation. For the sake of explanation, let's also assume that the leaflet is typeset using the a4paper paper size (with landscape dimensions 297mm by 210mm).

2. Create a second document that looks like this:

   \documentclass{article}
   \usepackage[paperwidth=317mm,paperheight=230mm]{geometry}% http://ctan.org/pkg/geometry
   \usepackage{pdfpages}% http://ctan.org/pkg/pdfpages
   \pagestyle{empty}% Empty header/footer
   \begin{document}
   \includepdf[pages=-,frame,noautoscale]{leaflet}
   \end{document}
   

   This includes all/both the pages of leaflet.pdf (using pages=-) on a page of size 317mm by 230mm (via the geometry package), adds a frame around both pages (via the frame option) and does not modify the scale of the pages in leaflet.pdf (with noautoscale). The new stock size allows for a 10mm printing margin around all of the document margins:

   

   This way you maintain the original document size (A4), but you are required to print it on larger stock (at least 317mm by 230mm). Of course, this "print margin" can be adjusted as necessary.

Using a similar technique (or perhaps via the graphicx package), the "reverse" is also possible. That is, if you're only capable of printing onto (say) a4paper, then reducing leaflet.pdf while still maintaining the aspect ratio onto a page to allow for some printing margin.

Answer 2

I don't think leaflet supports this directly.

The documentation for leaflet states, as you say, that, if a larger margin is needed to allow for print engine margins, the small page margins should be adjusted.

The horizontal and vertical and margins of the (small) pages default to 8\,mm and 11\,mm, respectively, and can be changed using |\setmargins|, as explained above. This may be useful, if the printing engine exhibits larger unprintable margins.

My understanding of this is that, although it would reduce the printable area on every small page, it still allows the leaflet to be formed by folding without any trimming. As the class README states:

The leaflet class: A document class to create small hand-outs (flyers) that fit on a single sheet of paper which is then folded twice.

An alternative might be to adopt the default (or smaller) margins and then avoid putting content for printing into the non-printable area on affected pages.

Answer 3

I recently had the same problem like in this old post and neither of the solutions suggested satisfied my needs. Finally, it simply worked by adding \special{papersize=303mm,216mm} (supposed you need 3mm added on each outer margin and your start point is a4paper) for each combined, large page needed (i.e. for one physical sheet of paper place the command two times somewhere in the document).

I'm sure that this solution is neither good coding nor nice latex practice, and especially it might be a special, lucky solution for people using xelatex with texlive in OSX, which is what I do.

To compensate for the white borders arising by this practice, just make your includes images large enough. This also applies to coloured backgrounds, which can be extended by

\AddToBackground{6}{%  Background of a small page
  \put(0,-20){\textcolor{cyan!15}{\rule{\paperwidth}{1.2\paperheight}}}}

(Note the yshift by -20 and the ruleheight of something larger than \paperheight) Images in the background can likewise be shifted downwards if needed.