Printing a large graphics file onto mutiple sheets

[rodgoslin]

Has anyone come up with a way of dividing a large graphics image into multiple parts and printing each, to identical scale on multiple A4 sheets, such that they can be physically cut and pasted into a large whole. Say, poster size. A simple way, please. I note that Mga6 cauldron has an option to install Posterazor, but that's still in the future.

[Lebarhon]

hello,
I never tried, but in Libre Office Draw, You have an option called "Distribute on multiple sheets of paper" in File / Print / Libre Office / Size.

[rodgoslin]

That sounded like a good idea. Alas, it did not work. I created a large sheet (A0), pasted the graphic onto it, Expanded that to cover the whole sheet. So far, so good. Elected to print, set the option, as you suggest to 'Distribute on multiple sheets...' Again so far so good. The preview showed the top left hand corner of the sheet, as it should. However when i hit 'print' all it printed was the single sheet depicted in the preview. I tried again but had the same result. I would have thought that ordered to print onto mutiple sheets, that it would continue to print until all images in the mosaic had been printed. There didn't appear to be any option to select any of the mosaic sheets as a target for the printer. Top marks for the idea, in Libre Office Draw, but none for the execution thereof. Unless someone could point me in the right direction

[dbg]

Insert your graphic into LibreOffice Calc. Set your page size then select "View/Page Break Preview". Export as PDF and it will make a multipage pdf that can be printed and cut to make a large printout. It doesn't seem obvious to use a spreadsheet to manipulate a bitmap...but it works!

[doktor5000]

FWIW, what you're looking for is usually called poster print or tiling.

See e.g. http://posterazor.sourceforge.net/index ... ng=english (although it's heavily outdated and might not run/compile without patching)
and maybe http://alternativeto.net/software/poste ... form=linux for some alternatives.

[rodgoslin]

Still no results on the subject. There is, in the Mga6 Cauldron set an rpm file for printerazor, but in fails to install, "due to unsatisfied libfltk_images.so.1.3". Which is strange, since fltk, with libfltk_images.so.1.3, is, in fact installed. the Libre Office route still looks the easiest route to a result, but I cannot find a way past the application only printing the first of the required multiple sheets. It does print off the one sheet very well, but one sheet on its own, without sight of any of the rest is not a lot of use. Apart from adding yet more paper to my scrap paper mountain.

[rodgoslin]

Since this latter post seemed to pointing at a problem in Libre Office, I opened a thread on their forum, on the subject of the failure to print a set of 'distributed' sheets. Unfortunately, although it has been read a number of times, nobody, yet, has replied to it For the moment, I'm using Gimp to divide the sheet into four pieces (A quarter of the sheet plus an overlap) then adjusting the dimensions of each sheet to be the same, in pixels, as all the others and then printing off each sheet. It all takes an absolute age, and that for a four sheet format. I shudder to think how long it would take for a real multi sheet printout.

[morgano]

Posterazor works nicely on Cauldron.
It takes a bitmap and creates a multipage pdf.
Nice settings for scale/pages x/y, centering, overlap etc.

Having to first create a hi res bitmap from non bitmap documents like vector and text documents is a bit tedious and loose sharpness.

I had partial success a while ago with pdfposter that use pdf as input. (it borked on some documents)
https://pythonhosted.org/pdftools.pdfposter/ https://codeyarns.com/2015/10/08/how-to ... pdfposter/

We also have Poster in the repo. "Poster can be used to create a large poster by building it from multiple pages and/or printing it on large media. It expects as input a generic (encapsulated) postscript file, normally printing on a single page. The output is again a postscript file," try poster --help

Another alternative may be http://www.wizards.de/~frank/pstill.html

KDE3 had this built into the printing system - the natural place for this, and it was "just working"
https://cweiske.de/tagebuch/Printing%20 ... m#kprinter
https://blogs.kde.org/2007/10/19/how-ea ... nt-updated
Sometimes i think i should install an old KDE3 distro in a Virtual Machine just to use that luxory

[rodgoslin]

Sorry for the delay in replying to your post, Morgano. I did finally get my enlarged poster, by chopping the original into four pieces with Gimp. But it was an effort to get them all to printout at the same scale. A lot of 'printed one side' paper has been added to my scrap paper/shopping list pile!. I've chickened out at subdividing it into nine. I'll wait foe Mga 6, which hopefully will have (from Cauldron availability) Posterrazor in the repos.

Cheers.