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Open Source Software for Print Tiling?

tileMe asks: "The US National Park Service's Digital Maps department's website claims the following: 'To print maps larger than your printer's paper size using page tiling, you must have the full retail version of Adobe Acrobat 5.0. The oversize map is divided into tiles or sections, each of which is printed on one page. You can then manually cut and tape these sections together.' I need to do this EXACT thing but can't purchase anything. What Open Source or Freeware software can I use and how do I do this? The only requirements are the software must run on a 300MHz PC with Win9x or Linux."

11 of 42 comments (clear)

  1. It's in your printer driver by bromba · · Score: 3, Informative

    The options screen for most printer drivers under Windows has an option for this. For example in Epson drivers it's called "Poster Printing". Select this option and then set the number of pages your print out will span and you are done. Hope this helps

  2. I'd probably use ghostscript.. by zcat_NZ · · Score: 3, Informative

    I'd probably render the pdf into a very high res ppm then use pnmcrop to cut it down to individual pages. Unless gs can do the whole thing directly; I didn't actually bother to check. :)

    --
    455fe10422ca29c4933f95052b792ab2
  3. easy in postscript by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Convert to postscript, then stick something like this in the beginning:

    /xpost 4 def /ypost 4 def

    userdict begin /bop-hook {
    36 36 translate
    dup xpost ypost mul mod
    dup xpost mod hsize 36 xpost 1 sub mul sub mul neg exch
    xpost idiv vsize 36 ypost 1 sub mul sub mul neg translate
    xpost ypost scale
    -36 -36 translate
    } def end

    This has worked for me in the past, but I can't remember exactly how to use it. Anyway I'm sure you can find *plenty* of postscript hacks out there.

  4. poster is a program for you by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    http://packages.debian.org/unstable/text/poster.ht ml

    in debian...

    But you can use kprinter or something, what use this program. Or build it yourself.

    crown

  5. karma whoring by dago · · Score: 3, Informative
    ok, here are some links :

    --
    #include "coucou.h"
  6. Ghostscript, GSview, and RedMon are your friends. by Jim+Efaw · · Score: 2, Informative

    Maybe you already tried this, but: Try installing GSview for Windows. If it can't grok the file, try printing it once the Evil Way but sending it to the RedMon virtual printer driver - then you'll have a copy you can actually use.

  7. psnup by DarkDust · · Score: 3, Informative

    You might want to check out psnup. Unfortunately I can't provide a link to the homepage as the old homepage says that it's moving to a new location but the link leading to that new location is dead :-(

    Anyways, psnup should be easily avaible via rpmfind or something, many distributions should also have it around (I'm pretty sure it comes with SuSE at least).

    psnup works pretty good for me although it seems to have problems with posters of size A0 or bigger

    1. Re:psnup by infront314 · · Score: 2, Informative

      Another program to check out is mpage. And I had a link... :-)

      mpage can also be found via rpmfind.

  8. another one by Mike_R · · Score: 2, Informative

    I needed this exact functionality some time ago, and mentioned it to a friend. He incorporated it into his anti-paint program. It's a linux program and it needs to be compiled from source. I haven't tried it yet, so don't blame me if it doesn't work, blame the author :)

  9. Re:translation: by n9hmg · · Score: 2, Informative

    As he said, he's looking for an open-source way of doing it, not buying or warezing the Adobe stuff. While I don't object to making a copy of a CD so you can preserve the original, watching a show taped earlier, or reading a book for a second time without paying for it again (all things publishers are trying to get control of), that would be stealing. Personally, I'm annoyed that the government would suggest that in order to use what we've already payed for, we have to buy something else. It puts me in mind of the tax software issue. If the IRS themselves can't write the tax code as software code (and open-source it), the code is too complicated.
    Any, back on-topic - I think there's something called "poster" to specifically do that with postscript files. pdf2ps the file, and work from that. I'm not sure if those utilities keep color, though.

  10. NPS Digital Maps (PUT THE LINK IN THE ^%$ ARTICLE) by mbstone · · Score: 2, Informative

    NPS Digital Maps are here.