General ⇒ Create a5 book layout similar to a4 size

[fluxman]

Hi,

I've used latex in the past for a couple of mathematical papers which look great in A4 size. However, i'm interested in writing a self published book in latex (i'll probably print and bind it cheaply).
However, with A4 paper size, a lot of paper is wasted which doesn't look good in a book. I've noticed that the content shown on A4 paper nicely fits onto an A5 piece of paper.
So my question is, how do you set up latex so that it generates content exactly the same size as it would be if it were A4, but so that the page size is A5 (basically i'm asking how do you TRIM all the margins from the default a4 page...imagine printing out default A4 page and using scissors to remove the huge margin's until it's A5 size).

Thanks for any help!

[fluxman]

if you use the geometry package with the following options

\usepackage[a5paper]{geometry}

then it provides good margin sizes. The text-area ends up being slightly smaller than the A4 text-area, but it's bigger than the default A5 text area you get if you just specify a5paper in the documentclass options.

Jolly Good.

[DaveFromOz]

Further to the previous reply about using the geometry package.

Try using

Code: Select all

\usepackage[ a4paper,           %paper size
                 hmargin=1.0cm, %horizontal margin = 1 cm on each side
                 vmargin=1.0cm, %vertical margin = 1 cm top and bottom
%                tmargin=1.2cm, %top margin = 1.2 cm
%                bmargin=0.8cm, %bottom margin = 0.8 cm 
                 ] geometry

This will give you more text on the paper than the defaults. Don't forget to try to set it up to get about 65-72 characters per line for optimal reading. You may need to adjust horizontal margins and font size to get it right.

I use this format because I can comment out different versions of the parameters to see how they work. As you can see, I have set this up to use symetrical top and bottom margin, but there is an alternative version with different top and bottom margin.

Look at the file 'manual.pdf' in your texmf\doc\latex\geometry folder for more details.

Have fun,
Dave