How do I make a booklet in FrameMaker? [Windows & Macintosh]

[Arnis_Gubins]

The process of making a booklet (i.e. pages printed out in a specific order so that the sheets can be folded and stapled together) is called imposition. It is usually best done after the fact on a PDF file. There are a number of utilities that can create booklets from PDFs (as a bonus the tools aren't specific to FrameMaker) or they act as printer drivers do this during the output stage to PDF.

Some of the PDF-based tools out there for this include:

Quite Imposing at http://www.quite.com
PDFSnake at http://www.pdfsnake.com
cutePDF at http://www.cutepdf.com/
PDFenhancer at http://www.apagoinc.com/prod_home.php?prod_id=2
CheapImpostor at http://www.cheapimpostor.com/
dots Pilot 2 http://www.dots-software.com/pilot_2.php

There are some printer drivers that will create booklets. However, they all do not support postscript in most cases, so if you have EPS or PDF graphics, you shouldn't use them.

FinePrint at http://www.fineprint.com/products/fineprint/index.html
ClickBook at http://www.bluesquirrel.com/clickbook/
CMYK PDF Creator (supports postscript and provides colour correction from FM) from Grafikhuset at
http://www.grafikhuset.net/international/chameleon/chameleon_cmykcreator_features.htm

Finally, there used to be a plug-in for FM available from Mekon called mPose (or something like that), but it seems to have disappeared from their website. See http://www.mekon.com

[tlmurray23]

Macintosh
Macintosh users have free and donationware solutions for making booklets.

Printing booklets From Frame
If you have set up an Acrobat printer, either by Desktop Printer Utility or by Virtual Printer:

1. Choose Page Setup > Page Attributes section.
2. Set the paper to an appropriate large size, such as you would choose ledger paper for a standard 8.5-by-11 page.
3. Select Booklet -- the graphics are bit funny, but the one on the left is most likely the one you want.
4. Click Ok.
5. Print to a file, no special options needed.
6. When you distill this file, you get ledger-size, double-sided paper with pages imposed properly.

Creating booklets from already-created PDFs in OS X
For those who have standard PDFs you'd like to turn into a booklet, there is a donationware program called CocoaBooklet ( that quickly processes PDFs into booklets. Further, it can install a service at the OS level.