From d7480d330d0934b7bc487170e8aff59c963abb40 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: DarkSun Date: Tue, 17 Sep 2019 12:23:08 +0800 Subject: [PATCH] =?UTF-8?q?=E9=80=89=E9=A2=98:=2020190901=20How=20to=20wri?= =?UTF-8?q?te=20zines=20with=20simple=20tools?= MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit sources/tech/20190901 How to write zines with simple tools.md --- ...01 How to write zines with simple tools.md | 138 ++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 138 insertions(+) create mode 100644 sources/tech/20190901 How to write zines with simple tools.md diff --git a/sources/tech/20190901 How to write zines with simple tools.md b/sources/tech/20190901 How to write zines with simple tools.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000000..05b21f047e --- /dev/null +++ b/sources/tech/20190901 How to write zines with simple tools.md @@ -0,0 +1,138 @@ +[#]: collector: (lujun9972) +[#]: translator: ( ) +[#]: reviewer: ( ) +[#]: publisher: ( ) +[#]: url: ( ) +[#]: subject: (How to write zines with simple tools) +[#]: via: (https://jvns.ca/blog/2019/09/01/ways-to-write-zines-without-fancy-tools/) +[#]: author: (Julia Evans https://jvns.ca/) + +How to write zines with simple tools +====== + +People often ask me what tools I use to write my zines ([the answer is here][1]). Answering this question as written has always felt slightly off to me, though, and I couldn’t figure out why for a long time. + +I finally realized last week that instead of “what tools do you use to write zines?” some people may have actually wanted to know “how can I do this myself?”! And “buy a $500 iPad” is not a terribly useful answer to that question – it’s not how I got started, iPads are kind of a weird fancy way to write zines, and most people don’t have them. + +So this blog post is about more traditional (and easier to get started with) ways to write zines. + +We’re going to start out by talking about the mechanics of how to write the zine, and then talk about how to assemble it into a booklet. + +### Way 1: Write it on paper + +This is how I made my first zine (spying on your programs with strace) which you can see here: . + +Here’s an example of a page I drew on paper this morning pretty quickly. It looks kind of bad because I scanned it with my phone, but if you use a real scanner (like I did with the strace PDF above), the scanned version comes out better. + + + +### Way 2: Use a Google doc + +The next option is to use a Google doc (or whatever other word processor you prefer). [Here’s the Google doc I wrote for the below image][2], and here’s what it looks like: + + + +They key thing about this Google doc approach is to apply some “less is more”. It’s intended to be printed as part of a booklet on **half** a sheet of letter paper, which means everything needs to be twice as big for it to look good. + +### Way 3: Use an iPad + +This is what I do (use the Notability app on iPad). I’m not going to talk about this method much because this post is about using more readily available tools. + + + +### Way 4: Use a single sheet of paper + +This is a subset of “Write it on paper” – the [Wikibooks page on zine making][3] has a great guide that shows how to write out a tiny zine on 1 piece of paper and then fold it up to make a little booklet. Here are the pictures of the steps from the Wikibooks page: + + + +Sumana Harihareswara’s [Playing with python][4] zine is a nice example of a zine that’s intended to be folded up in that way. + +### Way 5: Adobe Illustrator + +I’ve never used Adobe Illustrator so I’m not going to pretend that I know anything about it or put together an example using it, but I hear it’s a way people do book layout. + +### booklets: the photocopier method + +So you’ve written a bunch of pages and want to assemble them into a booklet. One way to do this (and what I did for my first zine about strace!) is the photocopier method. There’s a great guide by Julia Gfrörer in [this tweet][5], which I’m going to reproduce here: + +![][6] +![][7] +![][8] +![][9] + +That explanation is excellent and I don’t have anything to add. I did it that way and it worked great. + +If you want to buy a print copy of that how-to-make-zines zine from Thruban Press, you can [get it here on Etsy][10]. + +### booklets: the computer method + +If you’ve made your zine in Google Docs or in another computery way, you probably want a more computery way of assembling the pages into a booklet. + +**what I use: pdflatex** + +I do this using the `pdfpages` LaTeX extension. This sounds complicated but it’s not really, you don’t need to learn latex or anything. You just need to have pdflatex on your system, which is a `sudo apt install texlive-base` away on Ubuntu. The steps are: + + 1. Get a PDF with the pages from your zine (pages need to be a multiple of 4) + 2. Get the latex file from [this gist][11] + 3. Replace `/home/bork/http-zine.pdf` with the path to your PDF and `1-28` with `1-however many pages are in your zine`. + 4. run `pdflatex formatted-zine.tex` + 5. Tweak the parameters until it looks the way you want. The [documentation for the pdfpages package is here][12] + + + +I like using this relatively complicated method because there are always small tweaks I want to make like “oh, the right margin is too big, crop it a little bit” and the pdfpages package has tons of options that let me make those tweaks. + +**other methods** + + 1. On Linux you can use the `pdfjam` bash script, which is just a wrapper around the pdfpages latex package. This is what I used to do but today I find it simpler to use the pdfpages latex package directly. + 2. There’s a program called [Booklet Creator][13] for Mac and Windows that [@mrfb uses][14]. It looks pretty simple to use. + 3. If you convert your PDF to a ps file (with `pdf2ps` for instance), `psnup` can do this. I tried `cat file.ps | psbook | psnup -2 > booklet.ps` and it worked, though the resulting PDFs are a little slow to load in my PDF viewer for some reason. + 4. there are probably a ton more ways to do this, if you know more let me know + + + +### making zines is easy and low tech + +That’s all! I mostly wanted to explain that zines are an easy low tech thing to do and if you think making them sounds fun, you definitely 100% do not need to use any fancy expensive tools to do it, you can literally use some sheets of paper, a Sharpie, a pen, and spend $3 at your local print shop to use the photocopier. + +### resources + +summary of the resources I linked to: + + * Guide to putting together zines with a photocopier by Julia Gfrörer: [this tweet][5], [get it on Etsy][10] + * [Wikibooks page on zine making][3] + * Notes on making zines using Google Docs: [this twitter thread][14] + * [Stolen Sharpie Revolution][15] (the first book I read about making zines). You can also get it on Amazon if you want but it’s probably better to buy directly from their site. + * [Booklet Creator][13] + + + +-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- + +via: https://jvns.ca/blog/2019/09/01/ways-to-write-zines-without-fancy-tools/ + +作者：[Julia Evans][a] +选题：[lujun9972][b] +译者：[译者ID](https://github.com/译者ID) +校对：[校对者ID](https://github.com/校对者ID) + +本文由 [LCTT](https://github.com/LCTT/TranslateProject) 原创编译，[Linux中国](https://linux.cn/) 荣誉推出 + +[a]: https://jvns.ca/ +[b]: https://github.com/lujun9972 +[1]: https://twitter.com/b0rk/status/1160171769833185280 +[2]: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1byzfXC0h6hNFlWXaV9peJpX-GamJOrJ70x9nu1dZ-m0/edit?usp=sharing +[3]: https://en.m.wikibooks.org/wiki/Zine_Making/Putting_pages_together +[4]: https://www.harihareswara.net/pix/playing-with-python-zine/playing-with-python-zine.pdf +[5]: https://twitter.com/thorazos/status/1158556879485906944 +[6]: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EBQFUC0X4AAPTU1?format=jpg&name=small +[7]: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EBQFUC0XsAEBhHf?format=jpg&name=small +[8]: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EBQFUC1XUAAKDIB?format=jpg&name=small +[9]: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EBQFUDRX4AMkIAr?format=jpg&name=small +[10]: https://www.etsy.com/thorazos/listing/693692176/thuban-press-guide-to-analog-self?utm_source=Copy&utm_medium=ListingManager&utm_campaign=Share&utm_term=so.lmsm&share_time=1565113962419 +[11]: https://gist.github.com/jvns/b3de1d658e2b44aebb485c35fb1a7a0f +[12]: http://texdoc.net/texmf-dist/doc/latex/pdfpages/pdfpages.pdf +[13]: https://www.bookletcreator.com/ +[14]: https://twitter.com/mrfb/status/1159478532545888258 +[15]: http://www.stolensharpierevolution.org/