minicomic

minicomic is a library providing a set of rake rules for building print and web-ready files for minicomics from a set of SVG files.

Currently, it is hard-coded for generating 5.5x8.5in format black-and-white comics of the sort most suitable for inexpensive photocopying.

requirements

In addition to the obvious requirements for Ruby and Rake, minicomic requires the following software to be installed and available on your shell’s path:

  • Inkscape

  • psutils

  • Ghostscript

  • ImageMagick

  • pngcrush

If you’re on Ubuntu, these correspond to the inkscape, psutils, gs-gpl, imagemagick and pngcrush packages, respectively.

usage

The simplest way to use minicomic is to create a Rakefile as follows:

require 'minicomic'

minicomic '.'

minicomic will look for pages in a pages/ folder in the given directory (in this particular case, ‘.’ meaning the directory where the Rakefile lives).

minicomic looks for SVG files in pages/ named according to the following conventions:

page-NN.svg

page NN

front-cover.svg

the front cover of the comic (optional)

back-cover.svg

the back cover of the comic (optional)

inside-front.svg

the inside front cover of the comic (optional)

inside-back.svg

the inside back cover of the comic (optional)

It is also possible to have two-page spreads in single files:

pages-NN-MM.svg

the spread spanning pages NN-MM

cover.svg

the cover (back and front together in one file; optional)

Page numbers start at 1 (page 1 is a right-handed page, and the first interior page). Page documents should be 5.5x8.5in or smaller for single pages, and 11x8.5in for two-page spreads.

print output

When generating output for print, minicomic will round the number of interior pages up to the next multiple of four, padding with blank pages as needed. The page graphics will be scaled down slightly from their full size, and smaller graphics will be centered.

To generate a “proof” PDF that you can examine to see what spreads will look like in the assembled comic, use:

+rake proof+

The PDF will be created as print/proof.pdf. Since I rarely use the inside covers for anything, minicomic places the front and back covers opposite the first and last interior pages respectively.

To generate a set of PDFs suitable for printing and assembly, use:

+rake print+

This will generate a set of three PDFs:

print/duplex.pdf

suitable for duplex printing

print/front.pdf and print/back.pdf

front and back sides for single-sided printing

If you are using a duplex printer, if you’re lucky it will deposit its output pages face-up and they will be ready for assembly (this is the norm). Otherwise if it deposits its pages face-down, you will have reverse them before you can assemble the comic.

When using the single-sided PDFs, _you will need to experiment_ to find the correct order to use them in, and the correct way to flip the paper. For my printer, I print back.pdf first, then flip the stack the long way before printing front.pdf on it. Other printers will differ depending on how the paper is loaded in the tray, and how it is stacked on output.

web output

You can generate files for web upload via:

+rake web+

When generating output for the web, minicomic will generate a set of 4-bit greyscale PNGs, and a corresponding set of JPEG thumbnails:

web/page-NN.png

page NN

+web/thumbnail-NN.jpeg

thumbnail of page NN

cleanup

You can easily get rid of the temporary and output files with:

+rake clean+