Set page size for the output

[bytrangle]

As I understand, this tool is primarily used for projecting. For projecting, the final size of the output is irrelevant.

However, I think this tool is also awesome for assembling an A0 page from multiple A4 pages. It's faster, easier to use, and more accurate than any other methods I've known. However, there is nothing in the tool that allows users to set the output's dimension.

Are you open to a feature for configuring output's dimension? My main language is Javascript, but I can take the time to help.

[cfcurtis]

Hi, thanks for the suggestion and the offer! I've been asked about this kind of thing before, but the issue is that most sewing patterns don't tile nicely to an A0 size. Would you want to tile it and then split into multiple A0 pages?

There is actually a target size option that scales the output to fit a given page dimension, but it's only exposed on the command line as it's not appropriate for sewing patterns.

[bytrangle]

I've realized that I've been using the "tile pages" feature. I suppose we'll need to calculate the how many A0 pages needed based on the number of columns (or rows) specified by the user. There's also a chance that the tiling settings given by the user will cause out-of-bound e.g. they specify 6 columns, but the A0 can only hold at most 5 columns of portrait A4 pages, so they will need to be informed of that.

What is the command for running Pdf Stitcher in CLI?

[cfcurtis]

Yes, the out of bounds thing is what I meant by not tiling nicely to an A0 size. Would people still want to create A0 pages if they need to be cut and taped anyway?

The CLI is poorly documented at the moment (and needs improvements, particularly for the layer stuff), but if you've installed via pip then you can run the command pdfstitcher --help to see the various options. For example, to tile all pages of a document with 5 columns, the command would be:

pdfstitcher --columns 5 infile.pdf outfile.pdf

To scale to fit, you can specify a target height and width e.g.:

pdfstitcher -c 5 --target-width 33.1 --target-height 46.8 infile.pdf outfile.pdf

Both height and width need to be defined right now, and it will crash if the file doesn't have layers. I pushed a fix for this in the cli_improvements branch, but haven't put out a new release yet.

[bytrangle]

Yes, the out of bounds thing is what I meant by not tiling nicely to an A0 size. Would people still want to create A0 pages if they need to be cut and taped anyway?

I'm afraid I don't follow this. Suppose each A0 page can take 5 columns and 3 rows of portrai A4, This means each A0 page can have at most 15 A4s. If the original A4 pattern has 40 pages, I will need 4 A0 pages to tile all of the A4.

People can send this output pdf of size A0 with 4 pages to the copy shop to print. Why does one need to cut and tape?

On a second thought, how do I know that each A0 takes 5 columns and 3 rows 🤔? I laid them out on Inkscape. So unless people have a similar tool to play around the A4, it can be hard to visualize how they all fit.

[cfcurtis]

People can send this output pdf of size A0 with 4 pages to the copy shop to print. Why does one need to cut and tape?

Because the boundaries of those pages will still cut through pattern pieces, unless the designer laid them out to fit A0 to begin with (in which case, stitching is not needed). It's still a lot less work to assemble 4 pages than 40 though so it could be something people will want.

On a second thought, how do I know that each A0 takes 5 columns and 3 rows 🤔? I laid them out on Inkscape. So unless people have a similar tool to play around the A4, it can be hard to visualize how they all fit.

Fitting the pages into one or several A0s can be calculated automatically, but finding the best layout for the pattern pieces definitely needs some visuals. This is why I haven't bothered to implement such a feature in the past :)

[gaby64]

I implemented changes to achieve my desired effect, unrelated to stitching btw (so there may be regressions there), I wanted it to collapse the free space on shipping labels that display only one per page in a multi label pdf. Next I might add automatic trim by detecting where the empty space is on each label.

gaby64@7ed3b4e

[cfcurtis]

@gaby64 oh yes, scaling would not be an issue there! Automatic trim sounds like a nice addition - I know imagemagick can to it for images, but as usual anything PDF is trickier.