Ceci est une ancienne révision du document !
Although the purpose of this article is to explain how I make Full Circle Magazine special editions, once learned the various tools can be used for other purposes. Overall, it’s mostly a PDF for newbies tutorial using the free tools installed on my Kubuntu laptop. I have used several of these techniques to make PDF group directories and advertisement brochures. The initial step is to extract needed pages from the appropriate Full Circle Magazine (or other PDF). To do this, I use PDF Mod version 0.9.1 by right-clicking on the FCM edition of interest and selecting Open With > PDF Mod.
You will probably want to resize the PDF Mod application to maximum, and then, using the slider on the bottom right, increase the individual page size to allow for correctly selecting needed pages. In the example I selected only the title page, but you can right-click using the Ctrl and/or Shift keys as needed to highlight all appropriate pages. Right-clicking on the selected page(s) will give you the option of extracting the pages needed. (In some cases, removing unwanted pages might be simpler.) I used Flameshot version 0.83-2 to capture the included graphics, although I am not a big fan. Note that you will want to use the delay option – if showing selected choices on applications is important. I used gThumb version 3.8.0 to crop and scale images rather than the larger Gimp.
Extracting the selected page(s) brings up another window containing only the selected pages. Various options exist but, likely, you simply want to save the page(s) as a new PDF. PDF Mod automatically suggests a name for the PDF that’s about to be created; it has worked fine for my purposes. Save it to an appropriate folder. For a one-off or very limited purpose, you could add additional pages in PDF Mod by selecting File, then Insert from… and add the appropriate PDF(s). You can then move individual pages around within the open new PDF. In my workflow, I usually have more, or many more, than ten PDFs to combine, and I find it easier to use PDF Arranger to simply drag and drop the additional PDF files into a new PDF.
I add each PDF document, in chronological order. While as the name suggests, PDF Arranger allows you to move pages around in the document, like PDF Mod, it’s only one page at a time. The resulting file can then be saved. Subject content is, at that point, complete – but two other issues remain. Both the front or title page, and the ending page, need to be created. This part is less well defined and has changed over time. Following that, because PDFs are generally significantly bloated, the file is compressed to make dissemination easier.
The title page has been the most difficult task. For previously made special editions like the first Python series, usually modifying the numbers on the existing page is the simplest option. Because they are not available as SVGs, and the PDFs are often not easy to modify, it can sometimes be a bit tedious to attempt to make it look and feel like the original FCM. When no previous version exists, I try to create with Inkscape, so that I have an editable SVG version – even if I have to capture it as a PNG. I have used Gimp for that purpose on occasion. (If starting a new and unrelated magazine or series, I would try to stay with Inkscape and SVGs because future modifications are so much easier.) Both Inkscape and LibreOffice have come a long way as PDF editors and are worth looking into for that purpose.
Most recently I have tried to use the page banners (for example: ‘My Opinion’ or ‘Everyday Ubuntu’) for new special edition topics which, while not as impressive as the FCM Front page, require significantly less effort. For the ending pages, I now use the last two pages of the most current FCM edition which includes the then most up-to-date Patron and How To Contribute information. Both the Front page and ending pages can then be added using PDF Arranger or Mod. The title page will need to be moved to the top or front. The final task is to compress the new PDF. Depending on its purpose, that may not be necessary, but email size limitations may require some compression. To do so, I make a new copy of the file named 1.pdf. I then open the terminal at that location and type in or copy one of the following command lines:
gs -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -dCompatibilityLevel=1.4 -dPDFSETTINGS=/screen -dNOPAUSE -dQUIET -dBATCH -sOutputFile=1s.pdf 1.pdf gs -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -dCompatibilityLevel=1.4 -dPDFSETTINGS=/ebook -dNOPAUSE -dQUIET -dBATCH -sOutputFile=1e.pdf 1.pdf gs -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -dCompatibilityLevel=1.4 -dPDFSETTINGS=/printer -dNOPAUSE -dQUIET -dBATCH -sOutputFile=1p.pdf 1.pdf The input file 1.pdf gets converted to: • 1s.pdf – the screen, or most compressed, or • 1e.pdf – the ebook, or middle compression range, or • 1p.pdf – the printer, or least compressed version. Compare the three types to determine what meets your specific needs. Renaming the resulting file completes the process. Thanks to Ronnie for providing the above code and the general process when I first got started making Special Editions.