Criss-Cross Booklet
An invention to improve the ergonomics of unbound booklets.
I enjoy printing out academic papers and book chapters for reading, as opposed to using my cheap eInk e-reader. After struggling to find native Linux software which allows printing a PDF in the traditional booklet layout1, I settled for installing Adobe Acrobat DC2, which allows me to print a section of a PDF in the traditional booklet layout.
In the above diagram, we see booklet layouts for 4-, 8-, and 12-page documents. One sheet of A4 can be folded in half and oriented landscape to print 2 portrait A5 pages on each side, for 4 pages per sheet – this is called a folio. The diagram shows the folios from the top down, with the page numbers. You can see that for the traditional booklet layout, the page numbers follow a counter-clockwise semicircle.
The traditional booklet is intuitive and can be opened up to view two pages at a time. However, unless it is bound along the spine – using a stitch or staples – is is very unwieldy, because as soon as you turn the first page, you split the booklet in to two disconnected grouping of folios – these are called signatures.
The above diagram shows the effect of turning through a traditional booklet to read pages 2 and 3, and pages 4 and 5. As we turn page 1 and open the booklet, the first folio is no longer interwoven with the others, and so it floats and slips around. As we turn page 3, the second folio wraps around the first folio, but unwraps from the third folio, and so we have two disconnected signatures until we are completed with the booklet.
To avoid this, we can arrange the folios in a zig-zag or criss-cross pattern, so that each folio locks together with the next one.
Above we see the layout diagram for a 4-, 8-, and 12-page criss-cross booklet. The page numberings are much more complex and instead of following a nice loop, they seem to ‘snake’ up and down the signature.
Although more complex, the advantage of the criss-cross booklet is that as pages are folded over, the folios remain interwoven and lock together much better, making it easier to use in an unbound state.
Above we see the result of folding over page 1 on a 12-page criss-cross booklet. As we fold page 1 back, folio 1 wraps around folio 3, while folio 2 closes over both folios 1 and 3, thus maintaining the integrity of the signature. The disadvantage is that only one page can be read at once.
As we continue and fold over page 2, folio 2 moves to wrap around the back of folios 1 and 3, and the process repeats itself as we continue to read, with folios weaving in to each other like a zip. Notice that the direction in which a page is turned alternates as we read through the booklet.
Calculator
Below is a calculator software, implemented in ClojureScript using scittle3 which allows you to determine the page numbers for use with your printing software. Because of the way the page numbering works inside a criss-cross booklet, if you do not want to print an exact multiple of 4 pages (thus making each folio complete), you will need to provide a page number for a filler page, which is an ideally blank page, inserted in to the page number sequence, to allow you to skip pages which appear in the topology of the criss-cross booklet, but which you do not actually want printed.
Please note that this calculator has only been lightly tested!
(ns criss-cross-booklet)
(def pages-per-folio 4)
(defn folio-vec [folio]
(vector [{:folio folio
:side 0
:leaf 1}
{:folio folio
:side 1
:leaf 0}]
[{:folio folio
:side 0
:leaf 0}
{:folio folio
:side 1
:leaf 1}]))
(defn leaves-column [folios idx]
(let [top-folio (cond (and (even? folios) (= idx folios))
nil
(odd? idx)
(dec idx)
:else
idx)
bottom-folio (cond (zero? idx)
nil
(and (odd? folios) (= idx folios))
nil
(even? idx)
(dec idx)
:else
idx)
top-folio-vec (some-> top-folio (folio-vec))
bottom-folio-vec (some-> bottom-folio (folio-vec))]
(vec (concat (cond (nil? top-folio-vec)
[nil
nil]
(even? idx)
(get top-folio-vec 0)
:else
(get top-folio-vec 1))
(cond (nil? bottom-folio-vec)
[nil
nil]
(even? idx)
(get bottom-folio-vec 1)
:else
(get bottom-folio-vec 0))))))
(defn leaves-array [folios]
(mapv (partial leaves-column folios) (range (inc folios))))
(defn next-pos [folios pos direction]
(let [ [col row] pos]
(cond (= :forwards direction)
(if (even? col)
(get {0 [col 2]
2 [(inc col) 3]} row)
(get {3 [col 1]
1 [(inc col) 0]} row))
(= :backwards direction)
(if (even? col)
(get {3 [col 1]
1 [(dec col) 0]} row)
(get {0 [col 2]
2 [(dec col) 3]} row)))))
(defn pages-array
([folios] (pages-array folios (leaves-array folios)))
([folios leaves-array] (pages-array folios leaves-array 1 [0 0]))
([folios leaves-array page pos]
(let [ [col row] pos
last-page (* folios pages-per-folio)
middle-page (/ last-page 2)
direction (if (<= page middle-page) :forwards :backwards)]
(cond
(> page last-page)
leaves-array
(= page last-page)
(assoc-in leaves-array [folios (if (odd? folios) 0 3) :page] page)
(nil? (get-in leaves-array pos))
(pages-array folios leaves-array page (next-pos folios pos direction))
(some? (get-in leaves-array (conj pos :page)))
(throw (ex-info "Attempted to reassign page"))
(nil? (get-in leaves-array (conj pos :page)))
(cond
(= page middle-page)
(pages-array folios
(assoc-in leaves-array (conj pos :page) page)
(inc page)
[col (get {1 2
2 1} row)])
:else
(pages-array folios
(assoc-in leaves-array (conj pos :page) page)
(inc page)
(next-pos folios pos direction)))))))
(defn pages-vec [pages-array]
(->> pages-array
(flatten)
(filter some?)
(sort (fn [a b]
(cond (< (:folio a) (:folio b))
-1
(and (= (:folio a) (:folio b))
(< (:side a) (:side b)))
-1
(and (= (:folio a) (:folio b))
(= (:side a) (:side b))
(< (:leaf a) (:leaf b)))
-1
(= (select-keys a [:folio :side :leaf])
(select-keys b [:folio :side :leaf]))
0
:else
1)))))
(defn pages [pages-vec first-page last-page filler-page]
(->> pages-vec
(map :page)
(map #(+ (dec first-page) %))
(map #(if (> % last-page) filler-page %))))
(defn pages->folios [pages]
(js/Math.ceil (/ pages pages-per-folio)))
(defn pages-str [first-page last-page filler-page]
(clojure.string/join ", " (-> (inc (- last-page first-page))
(pages->folios)
(pages-array)
(pages-vec)
(pages first-page last-page filler-page))))
-
There is a section of the GNOME help webpages for Evince, the GNOME PDF reader, which provide algorithms for calculating the page numbers4 but there is no calculator widget and nobody has implemented this in Evince or GNOME print settings yet 🙃. ↩
-
Installing Adobe Acrobat DC on Linux was a painful experience: between the absurd throttling of Adobe’s file servers (I averaged about 10-20 KiB/s) and random crashes in the installer due to Wine config, it took me multiple hours to get it working. In the end I had to use a Snap package5. ↩
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https://help.gnome.org/users/evince/stable/print-booklet.html.en ↩