The program does steps 1 and 2. You have to do the rest to create a finished book.
How do I get it?
Download the program here. It is a Java jar file, which requires Java
to be installed and working on your machine. Bookbinder should run anywhere Java runs.
The source code is included,for those who are interested.
The program is released under the same license as itext, a mixture of Mozilla Public License and GNU Library General Public License.
How do I use it?
Check out the new Documentation page.
Ensure that you have Java installed.
Download and unzip Bookbinder.
Click or double click on bookbinder-3.0.jar to start in Windows or Mac.
Under Linux, open a terminal, cd into the directory and type
java -jar bookbinder3.0.jar
Load a PDF into the input viewer using the 'File' menu, 'Open input PDF'
Choose your printer type and paper size.
Choose the size of book you want. Currently there are three choices, two standard paperback sizes and as big as the paper allows.
Hit the 'Generate Document' button. The output viewer should display the first of the output files.
There will be a new folder called 'the-name-of-your-PDF-files' in the folder or
directory where the program resides. Inside are the new PDF's, ready for printing.
Printing issues
If you have a duplex printer, each signature will print in one go. If, like most people,
you have a plain old one-side-at-time printer, each signature consists of two PDFs and you
will have to print one, then turn the sheets over by hand to print the other. This can be a
fraught operation, so make sure the pages are the correct way round and don't get jammed on
the second trip through.
What if I don't have a PDF?
Maybe you have a non-PDF document you want to bind, say a Gutenberg Project
plain text file or a Rich Text Format document. In this case, the easiest option is to load it into a word processor, such as
OpenOffice, format it and use the 'Export as PDF' option to create a PDF. OpenOffice can
also import MSWord documents.
Other file formats can be converted to PDF with a greater or lesser degree of difficulty, using free
and commercial conversion utilities. Search the web for PDF conversion utilities.
Contact
What's it made of?
Bookbinder is written in Jython, a version of
Python that integrates pretty seamlessly with Java. The PDF grunt work is provided by Bruno Lowagie's
marvellous itext, a PDF generating library, which is versatile and well thought of. The viewers are
built using the JPedal library. The GUI is built using Swing, a standard Java GUI API, which seems to work well with Jython.