Re: plain TeX double-page layout?

Rodolfo Medina <[email protected]> Tue, 09 Sep 2025 22:57:07 +0000
Newsgroups gmane.comp.tex.texhax
Message-ID <871pof1bgc.fsf@lenovo>
Rodolfo Medina <[email protected]> writes:

> I suppose it's easy in LaTeX but wonder if it's possible in plain TeX to have
> a double-page layout, i.e. a big page with same height and double width of
> the original which contains two pages together, one aside the other, of the
> original file.  I'm sure it must be possible in plain TeX but can't have an
> idea of how.  Thanks for any suggestion.  Otherwise, I'll have to get what I
> want on the final PDF using some tools like qpdf or similar...  but
> preserving the internal links of the PDF.


Thanks to all that helped with this interesting problem: here's what I've
worked out of it: pdfjam performs perfectly the result simply with, e.g.:

 $ pdfjam o_sole_mio.pdf '{},1-' -o o_sole_mio2up.pdf --nup 2x1 --papersize '{34.8cm,19.5cm}'

where the paper's width is for me double the original wehereas the height
remains the same as the original filepage.  This solution unfortunately does
*not* preserve possible internal hyperlinks existing in the input PDF.

On the other hand, to do the job natively inside and within TeX fantastic
world, you have this (suggested by Daniel):

  https://ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/generic/2up

that I'm still testing and looks promising and seems to preserve the original
links.

Greetings,

Rodolfo