One feature that would be really nice in Filemaker is the ability to
print pages suitable for saddle stitch binding. That would mean the
printing of physical sheets (signatures?) with two non-sequential pages.

Preparing for a saddle stitch binding from conventional printing
requires physical cutting and pasting, then copying. Is there some way
Filemaker can eliminate the necessity for manually assembling a
paste-up? Or is there an inexpensive application that could take a
Filemaker export file and reassemble it for saddle stitch binding? I'm
sure there's an Adobe product that could do it, but that's not
inexpensive.

Thank you

The term for this re-ordering of pages for a book is "imposition".
Sorry I don't have any suggestions for what to use, but at least you
have a search term for Google. Unless you want to pull data into
another program to do the format there, you'll need something that
handles a printer file (on the Mac, e're talkin' pdf or ps).

-jb

Newbie FMP User wrote:

At $49 you could try FinePrint (WINDOWS only) http://www.fineprint.com

or perhaps http://www.farrukh.co.uk/Imposition%...are/index.html, but
this I don't know.

If you are any good in scripting with FM you might write your own, but this
gets cumbersome for large prints

Ursus

"Newbie FMP User" <new (AT) publishing (DOT) net> schreef in bericht
news:new-F9794D.22023420072005 (AT) news1 (DOT) west.earthlink.net...

In article <new-F9794D.22023420072005 (AT) news1 (DOT) west.earthlink.net>, Newbie
FMP User <new (AT) publishing (DOT) net> wrote:

Although it could probably be done in FileMaker, it would be
horrendously complicated and cumbersome (as "ursus.kirk" said).

Your best bet is to simply export the data and then create the layout
in a proper DTP package. The software you choose will depend on who is
doing the printing.

If you're doing the printing yourself on a dektop laser / inkjet and a
photocopier, then you could get away with something cheap like
Microsoft Publisher.

If the document is going to a professional print company, then you
really need a proper application like PageMaker, InDesign or Quark
XPress ... or a proper DTP company to do it for you. You'll need to
talk to the print company and see what they require from you (usually
it's a PDF file these days - and many won't touch a PDF from a
Microsoft application).

There are also shareware equivalents, but I don't know how good any of
those may or may not be.

As for the FileMaker data itself, it is possible to put formatting tags
in so that the exported data gets formatted by PageMaker (for example)
- of course you need to know what those tags actually are and how they
work for the application you're using.

I've never bothered to try this myself and always simply done the
formatting in PageMaker, but here's an old message by Gordon Woolf from
one of the PageMaker newsgroups:

Re: Generate a Pagemaker file from a database
Date: Tue, 12 Nov 2002

Yes, you can produce a report from the database which
can include PageMaker's tagged text commands. This is
commonly used for pre-formatting newspaper classified
ads, directories etc.

Easiest way to set it up is to prepare a sample of what
you want and then export that text as tagged text (but
it is advisable to read the section in the manual first).
You might also like to do a search for "tagged text" on
our website at <http://www.worsleypress.com>

--
Gordon Woolf
The Worsley Press <www.worsleypress.com>
Publishers of "How to Start and Produce a Magazine or
Newsletter"



The other even more expensive way is to simply design the layout within
FileMaker as A5 (for example), print that to a PDF and then use
imposition software to lay those A5 pages in the correct order on A4
sized pages for printing.





Helpful Harry
Hopefully helping harassed humans happily handle handiwork hardships ;o)

If you're on Windows and have a copy of Word, I think Word 2002 and has a
"book fold" or something like that. Look in the File > Page Setup > Pages
if I remember correctly.

"Newbie FMP User" <new (AT) publishing (DOT) net> wrote

Newbie FMP User wrote:

Hi. You didn't mention which platform you are using. If you use Mac,
there is a freeware program called CocoaBooklet which you drop a PDF
onto and it does the entire imposition process for you and spits out
another PDF..

Hope this helps..

Chris