can LaTeX help with book binding?

Question

Recently, a colleague of mine has done his own book binding. He has used LibreOffice. I am wondering if LaTeX could be used and if it could provide more assistance than LibreOffice.

The problem that I see, if I understand the binding process correctly, is that with 8 folios per stack, the outermost folio in the first stack contains pages number 1, 32 on one side and 2, 31 on the other side, etc.

Now, I am wondering, if LaTeX (or any of available modules) can help with this task? Basically, can LaTeX help with ordering the pages on the folios so that printing them is easy as pie?

UPDATE

This question is not exactly the same as Printing a book question. The other question wants to staple all of the folios of the document together at once. I want to be able to build sections from 8 folios (32 pages) and bind them together by sewing.

Answer 1

I see at least two different ways for two different ways to bind a book. The first way is to use pdfpages. I used that for "normal" binding with signatures. The other way is to use the geometry-package. This is good for press binding. Here are the specific examples:

Signatures with pdfpages

\documentclass[a4paper]{article}
\usepackage{pdfpages}

\begin{document}
\includepdf[pages=-,signature=4,landscape]{file.pdf}
\end{document}

Explanations:

• pages=-: use the whole document
• signature=x: how many pages on one signature (should be a multiple of 4)
• landscape: print the pdf pages in landscape mode

The result is a pdf file with nice printed signatures. you can then print them in duplex mode and start the binding process.

more information here: https://www.ctan.org/pkg/pdfpages

The geometry-way

(this is also good as a draft for books, see the showcrop option).

I think this is just good for a press binding with glue (personly I don't like that...)

geometry offers an option which sets some space on the left side

\documentclass[a4paper,twoside]{article}
\usepackage{lipsum}
\usepackage[a4paper,twoside,bindingoffset=1cm]{geometry}

\begin{document}
\lipsum[1-100] % expand if necessary
\end{document}

With the geometry-package you can also add the showframe option. This shows you the margins of the layout.

more information here: https://www.ctan.org/pkg/geometry

Conclusion

For a good book with real binding you should use the pdfpages way. Not so good is that you need to create a pdf first. For now I didn't find a way to do something similar with geometry. That would be the best because you can directly create the final pdf. Good luck.