In this tab you define the general disposition of your output page: booklet (or booklets) or only multiple pages on a single sheet. Just click the different options to see what they do.
Booklets (Single or Multiple)
In this mode the number of columns must always be a multiple of 2. Other values will be corrected by the program. If you indicate more than 1 for the rows, or more than 2 for the columns, you will have multiple copies of the same pair of pages. This is useful if you have an A6 format booklet and you want to print two copies on an A4 page (A5 for both pages, A4 for two copies).
The Single Booklet option will create one booklet from the whole file. If you select Multiple Booklets, You can define the maximum number of leafs (sheets of paper) for a booklet. Suppose you have a 60 pages document and you keep the default value (5), you will get 3 booklets of 20 pages (5 x 4) each: 1-20, 21-40, 41-60. The program will add the needed blank pages and try to equilibrate the booklets. If your document has 43 pages, a blank page will be added, and instead of making two booklets of 5 sheets of paper and 1 of 1 sheet, the program will reduce to 4 sheets the first two booklets, and the remaining booklet will have 3 sheets: 1-16, 17-32, 33-44.
Type Book or Calendar will define if the pages are positioned left-right or top-bottom.
Multiple pages
The three following options (2 pages, x pages in line, x pages in columns) are variants of the same process: place a given number of pages of the source file in a single page of the output page. 2 pages is the same thing as x pages in line with 1 line and 2 columns. Pages can be set in lines or in columns:
x pages in lines (3 lines, 3columns) 
x pages in columns (3 lines, 3columns)
Multiple copies
x copies will place multiple copies of the same source page in the output page. The total number depends on the number of rows and columns you define.
Step:
By default, when you select this option, step is set to 1. If you define step to y, you will get multiple copies of sets of y pages of your document. An example will show you what this means: Below you have the result with step = 1 on the left, step = 3 on the right.
If it is not clear for you, try with different values for step and see the result. It will be more clear than a long explanation.
One page
This option is used when you want to extract pages from a PDF file or to merge several PDF files (or pages from these files) in a single PDF file.
User defined
This is an advanced option which allows you to define the layout of pages on the sheet. When you click on this option, a small window opens:
Enter here the order in which pages must be placed on the output sheet. Follow theses rules:
- One line for each row of pages
- Comma separated
- If you repeat a number, the page will be placed multiple times on the sheet. In this case you should define the step. See explanations below
- You can create a blank page by entering a b
- You are responsible to enter here coherent data. Each line must have the same number of “pages”
- Numbers entered here are not page numbers. They indicate only the order in which the pages will be placed on the sheet. (In the examples below they do correspond for easier understanding, but this is only a particular case, first page of an unmodified PDF).
Some examples below.
| Normal case 1,3,5,7 2,4,6,8 |  |
| You may have as many rows and columns you want 1,3,5 7,9,11 2,4,6 8,10,12 |  |
| Pages repeated 1,2,1,4 3,4,2,3 |  |
| Blank pages 1,b,b,2 b,3,4,b |  |
The step parameter
If you repeat pages in your layout, like this example:
1,2,1,2
3,4,3,4
Then if you leave the parameter “Step” to “Automatic”, the program will calculate the step on the base of the total number of pages. In this case it will be 8 (2 x 4). This means that the first sheet will contain pages 1 to 8, and the second will contain pages 9 to 16. The result will be is:
| First sheet | Second sheet |
|---|---|
1,2,1,2 3,4,3,4 | 9,10,9,10 11,12,11,12 |
And pages 5,6,7, and 8 will never be displayed, which is surely not what you expect!
So you MUST indicate that the step is 4 and then you will get:
| First sheet | Second sheet | Third sheet |
|---|---|---|
1,2,1,2 3,4,3,4 | 5,6,5,6 7,8,7,8 | 9,10,9,10 11,12,11,12 |
Output size
In the disposition tab you find also the frame Output size. This frame allows you to indicate the size you want for the output page.
- Auto: With this option, no scaling is done. The size of the output page will be a multiple of the size of the source page (of the reference page to be precise ; See the description of the Options tab to find an explanation about the reference page). If your source file has A5 pages, and you have chosen the option booklets with one row, then the output page size will be A4. If you had selected multiple pages with two rows and two columns, then the output page will be A3. And so on.
- No change: The output page size will be the same as the source page ( of the reference page to be precise ; See the description of the Options tab to find an explanation about the reference page). Whatever your selection about rows and columns, if your source file has A5 pages, your output pages will be A5 and the pages you place on it will be scaled.
- User defined: Define here the value you want (Width first and then Height) if the previous options don’t meet your needs. Please, be careful that you will probably have to adjust the scale to get the result you want. This option is powerful but less easy to use.
Auto Scale : This option is normally checked and have a precise signification that you must understand : If you have source pages of different sizes, it will insure that each page is scaled to fit in the place reserved to it in the output page. An example will be more clear than this explanation. Suppose we are merging two files, one in A5 format and the other in A4. If auto scale is on, there is no problem:
The right page, which is in A4 in the source file, is correctly positioned.
If Auto scale is off, this page will not be scaled and it will not fit in its place, it will be croped:
In some particular situations it may be useful to set auto scale off, but this is rather uncommon.
There is presently no option to insure an automatic scaling of the whole page in case you choose the user defined option. This may be added in a next version.
