Flipping Rules in Imposition Wizard

There is an option in Imposition Wizard that lets you flip pages in most imposition layouts. Let’s start with a simple N–Up layout:

Simple N-Up layout

Let’s say you need to flip the middle row upside down for some reasons. Notice the Flipping rules field in the Layout panel on the right. It is currently empty. Try entering “0 0 0 1 1 1 0 0 0” there and see what happens:

N-Up layout with the middle row flipped

The pages in the middle row are now flipped upside–down.

Flipping Rules Format

The format is pretty simple: for every page on the sheet you put either “0” if you wan to leave the page as is, or “1” if you want it to be flipped.

There are 9 pages on the image above and we put three zeros, then three ones, and then another three zeroes which effectively tells Imposition Wizard to keep the first three pages intact, then flip the next three and finally leave the last three pages intact.

Let’s change the rules to “0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0”:

N-Up layout with every second page flipped

This time every second page is flipped as per the rules we defined.

Making Rules Shorter

There is no need to provide rules for every page on the sheet if the flipping logic is simple and the pattern repeats. For instance the image above show every second page flipped, so we can shorten the rules line to just “0 1”:

N-Up layout with every second page flipped with shorter rules line

As you can see the result is the same. Here’s how it works: Imposition Wizard takes the top left page on the sheet and takes the first number from the flipping rules. It then flips the page if the number is “1” or leaves it as is, if the number is “0”. Then it goes to the next page on the right and takes the next number from the rules and so on. If there is no numbers left in the rules line, it starts from the beginning of the rules line. If the rules line is empty, it is assumed that it has a single “0” number.

This way you can easily flip all the pages on the sheet by placing “1” in the rules line. This single–number rule will be applied to every page on the sheet:

Flipping all the pages on the sheet

If you put a single “0” number to the flipping rules field, all the pages will be displayed as is without flipping. Same happens for an empty flipping rules field.

Supported Layouts

Flipping rules are supported by most layouts in Imposition Wizard except for Booklet and Shuffle layouts. For booklets the reason is obvious: the layout is self–sufficient and doesn’t need extra flips. As for the Shuffle layout, it has its own flipping options, so there is no need to add another one.

The Dutch Cut layout has two independent flipping rules: one for the main block and another for the secondary one. Let’s make a simple Dutch Cut layout without any flips:

Simple dutch cut layout without any flips

Notice the Advanced section at the bottom of the right panel with two fields named Flipping rules and Extra block flipping rules. The former works for the main block of the layout (on the left) and the latter works for the secondary block on the right.

Let’s flip the bottom half of the main block and the right column of the secondary one. To flip the bottom row of the main block we need to put “0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1” into the Flipping rules field, and to flip the right column of the secondary block you need to put “0 1 0 1” (or just “0 1” as the pattern repeats) into the Extra block flipping rules field.

Dutch cut layout with flipped pages

Other layouts like Step and Repeat and Cut Stack are simple and have just one Flipping rules parameter. For all the layouts the rules are applied left to right and top to bottom.

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