113 lines
3.8 KiB
Markdown
113 lines
3.8 KiB
Markdown
[](https://travis-ci.org/josch/plakativ)
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[](https://ci.appveyor.com/project/josch/plakativ/branch/master)
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plakativ
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========
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Plakativ is German for "striking" or "eye-catching" and comes from the German
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word "Plakat" which means poster in English.
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This software allows one to stretch a PDF document across multiple pages that
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can then be printed on a common inkjet or laser printer, cut and glued together into a
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larger poster.
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Features
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========
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Plakativ allows one to create a poster using one of three different approaches:
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- I want a poster that fits into size X
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- I want a poster Y times the input page page area
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- I have Z pages of paper and want to print the biggest possible poster on them
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Plakativ works on Windows, Linux and MacOS. It offers a GUI based on tkinter, a
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command line interface and can be used as a Python module. Everything is inside
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a single file.
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Demo
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====
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[//]: # (To make a new Video, run:)
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[//]: # (ffmpeg -f x11grab -framerate 30 -video_size 800x600 -i :0.0+41,46 -preset ultrafast -c:v libx264 -crf 0 out.mp4)
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[//]: # (ffmpeg -i out.mp4 -ss 00:00:04.000 -r 2.5 plakativ%04d.png)
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[//]: # (convert -loop 0 plakativ*.png +map -layers Optimize plakativ.gif)
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[//]: # (gifsicle -b -O3 plakativ.gif)
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The demo shows a user choosing between the three different ways to define the
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poster size. Either by picking a size that the input will be fit into, by
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multiplying the area of the input page or by maximizing the poster size, given
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a number of pages one is willing to print on.
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Installation
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============
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Plakativ is available from pypi: https://pypi.org/project/plakativ/
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Thus you can just run `pip install plakativ` on your platform of choice.
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For Microsoft Windows users, PyInstaller based .exe files are produced by
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appveyor. If you don't want to install Python before using plakativ you can
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head to appveyor and click on "Artifacts" to download the latest version:
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https://ci.appveyor.com/project/josch/plakativ
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Complex Layouter
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================
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Oftentimes there is a way to create a poster of a specific size with less pages
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than would be needed with a regular arrangement of pages into rows and columns.
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For regular poster sizes, a more complex layout can save up to 3 or 5 pages of
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paper. If the regular simple layout and the complex layout require the same
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number of pages for a particular poster size, then plakativ will fall back to
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the simple layout. The following animation shows the complex layout that
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plakativ chooses when asked to produce the largest possible poster using X
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pages. The number of pages X can be seen in the center.
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Bugs
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====
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https://gitlab.mister-muffin.de/josch/plakativ/issues
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TODO
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====
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While basic functionality is implemented, lots of work remains to be done:
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- help button
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- print poster borders
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- print cutting guides
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- changing units
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- changing language
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- make PyMuPDF dependency optional
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- optionally, use pdfrw and/or pypdf2 to read/write PDF
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- improve command line interface
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- improve module interface
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Comparison to similar software
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==============================
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PosteRazor
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----------
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http://posterazor.sourceforge.net/
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PosteRazor served as the inspiration for this software. But in contrast to
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PosteRazor, plakativ allows PDF documents as input and outputs PDF document
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with the exact same quality as the input. It is thus not necessary anymore
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to first do a lossy rasterization of an input PDF so that one can work with
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PosteRazor.
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pdfposter
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---------
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https://pdfposter.readthedocs.io/en/stable/
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- no GUI
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- cumbersome box definition
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- no page borders for glueing
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- superfluous empty pages
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- only very simple layouter
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- scaling by width/height instead by area makes doubling unintuitive
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