Making a wallet-sized calendar for 8-up printing on letter-sized paper -- by Eugene Reimer 2009-November

While making a small wallet-sized calendar for Native Orchid Conservation Inc, I wrote these bash scripts to do the scaling of images, producing the calendar pages with pcal, and putting it all together into a postscript file for 8-up booklet-style printing:

mk-calendar-8up-wallet-sized - creates the calendar in both Postscript & PDF
mk-calendar-covers - an example for the part that needs customization
defscover.txt - postscript code needed by my sample mk-calendar-covers

Producing:
You need to supply the photos, one per month, and mk-calendar-8up-wallet-sized does everything else.  Your photos should have an aspect-ratio of approximately 1.5.

Printing:
By default the script produces pages suitable for the usual kind of duplex-printing, where pages are flipped on the long axis.  Specifying the --norotback option will produce a result that is nicer for viewing and is suitable for printing with end-over-end (short-axis) duplexing.  If you need to do the duplexing manually, just ensure that the backsides are upside-down.

Cutting, folding, stapling:
After duplex-printing onto 2 sheets of paper, with the frontsides (pg1 and pg3) face up, quarter the sheets, stack the quarters in chronological order, staple at the fold-line, then fold it, and your pocket-calendar is finished, except for a bit of trimming.  You should be aware that the calendar-month small-pages have some white margin, the photos have none.

Examples:
The 2010-NOCI-Calendar in Postscript;  in PDF.  (Both are suitable for end-over-end duplexing.)

PS: Some people think the back-cover is upside-down, but I suspect it depends on your point-of-view:-)


Send your questions, suggestions, bug-reports to ereimer@shaw.ca.