Tag Archives: landscape

Printing multiple pages on one with pgfpages

Your operating system can print several pages on one. Sometimes however you may want to have the PDF showing several slides on a single page, e.g. for handouts of a presentation. On a Linux system, psnup/pdfnup are extremely flexible if you are familiar with these commands and their options. But it’s definitely faster and more convenient to do it from inside a LaTeX document using pgfpages with just two lines of code.

Example 1: Two on One

\usepackage{pgfpages}
\pgfpagesuselayout{2 on 1}[a4paper,border shrink=5mm]

Example 2: Four on One

\usepackage{pgfpages}
\pgfpagesuselayout{4 on 1}[a4paper,border shrink=5mm,landscape]

Some remarks:

  • 2, 4, 8 and 16 on 1 are available (for resize to see below)
  • The border shrink option provides some space between slides
  • The landscape options is required depending on whether your pages are portrait/landscape.

\pgfpagesuselayout{resize to}[a4paper,border shrink=5mm]

Using resize to will resize any page to the selected page format (a4paper/letterpaper).

The package is quite limited in its functionality. However, since gpfpages is really easy to use and it’s a good choice in the most common situations.

Note, if you are using a table of contents, the page numbers may be wrong. To solve this issue, comment out the \pgfpagesuselayout{...}[...] command and typeset the document. This will set the page numbers right. Next you uncomment the line again and add a \nofiles command on a separate line. That will prevent Latex from overwriting “meta”-files and therefore leave the page numbers in your index untouched.


Save the planet using Latex, print 2in1!

I just found this very cool package which lets you easily print two pages in one. I have only tested it for articles and reports and it works perfectly for articles. Using the document-class report, the content is perfectly structured, but not the table of contents, which still takes the entire page. The package also messes up with the page numbers whenever you start a new chapter. So it basically only works with sections, but not chapters.

First tell Latex to turn the page to landscape:

\documentclass[a4paper, landscape]{article}

Next include the necessary packages:

\usepackage{2in1, lscape}

The latter is needed, as you not only want the paper layout, but also the content to be in “landscape-mode”.

Now add your document content and have fun printing (and saving the planet ;-) )!

The standard distributions have this package included, but just in case you can get it from here.


Landscape in Latex

The default page layout is “portrait”, but sometimes it is still useful/necessary to have the whole document or only single pages changed to “landscape”. The latter might be due to a large table or figure. This post will tell you how to change the page layout of the whole document or single pages to “landscape”. In addition, it is possible to make single pages appear left side up in the PDF, making them more readable.

Changing the whole document to “landscape” can be done be using the geometry-package:

\usepackage[landscape]{geometry}

You can also just change the page content to landscape, but not the actual page layout through the optional argument of the command “documentclass”. It does not make much sense, but you can do it:

\ documentclass[landscape, 12pt]{report}

Next I will show you how to change the page layout of single pages. The lscape-package provides according possiblities:

\usepackage{lscape}

With

\begin{landscape}
...
\end{landscape}

you define the section of your document to be set to “landscape”, e.g. a large table or figure.

This will not automatically rotate the page in the PDF and is useful if the document is destined for printing.

If you want to make appear the left side up, better readable on screen, the pdflscape-package will do it:

\usepackage{pdflscape}

and again:

\begin{landscape}
...
\end{landscape}

for the page to be “landscape”, while the rest will remain in “portrait” orientation. Nevertheless, the header/footer will also be changed in orientation.


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