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Open Source Software for Print Tiling?

Posted by Cliff on from the poor-man's-poster-creation dept.

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."

3 of 42 comments (clear)

  1. 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.

  2. auto-tiling of postscript files... by fingal · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I have a friend by the name of Simon Tufty who made a piece of software for designing kites. The output of this software was the plan which you then had to cut out to make the kite. The plan was on a scale of 1:1 and was therefore considerably bigger than most people's printer. He therefore wrapped it in a postscript wrapper that would do the tiling inside the postscript file itself. Therefore if you opened the plan in GV, then the number of pages that the document had would depend on the size of the output format that you set. It would also auto-create the cut marks around the edge along with labels to let you know which page should line up with which other page. Very cool. I don't believe that he is supporting the kite application any more, but I'm sure that if you got in touch with him then he would be happy to discuss the postscript hack.

    --

    The only Good System is a Sound System

  3. 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