Preview multipage documents with a defined grid layout.

Usage

The main function of this package is nup, which takes two main arguments: layout specifying the number of rows and columns, and pages, an array of images to place in the layout. The function also takes optional keyword arguments for customisation:

Some notes about these parameters:

• By default, a thin shadow is drawn around images, with built-in parameters fill: white, radius: 0pt, inset: 0pt, clip: false, shadow: 4pt, color: luma(50%).

• Setting shadow: false will switch to wrapping the images with a rect element instead, which by default is invisble with stroke: none, inset: 0pt. Use rect-args to change these settings.

• The document page is set by default as paper:"a4", margin:1cm, flipped:true, background:rect(width:100%, height:100%, fill: luma(95%)). The page can be set differently using the page-args argument, noting that auto sizes are unlikely to work as intended as the grid needs concrete sizes to work out the number of rows.

Intended use

This package grew from the need to preview multipage documents, similar to the \includepdfpages[nup=...]{} function in LaTeX. The original document must first be exported as multipage pdf (locally), or multiple images (svg or png), before being placed in the preview document.

Unfortunately, at the time of writing, it is not possible to call Typst as a subprocess, which would bypass the need for intermediate files. When using the online typst.app rather than a local typst compiler, one must first export images before reimporting them on the app (and note that multipage pdf files cannot be uploaded).

Example

The script below generates a multipage document, and arranges them using nup.

#set page(margin:0pt, flipped: true)
#let pages = range(1,13).map(i => rect(width:100%, height:100%,fill: color.hsv(i*30deg, 30%, 100%)))
#stack(..pages)

Compiled with

typst compile dummy.typ 

#import "@preview/nup:0.1.2": nup

// native import of pdf in recent typst
#nup("2x3", range(1,13).map(p => image("dummy.pdf", page: p)))

// alternatively, use muchpdf
#import "@preview/muchpdf:0.1.1": muchpdf
#let images = muchpdf(read("dummy.pdf", encoding: none))
// use data from image sequence
#nup("2x3", images.children)

Alternatively, export and reimport pages as individual image files,

mkdir images
typst compile preview.typ images/dummy{p}.svg

#let pages = range(1,12).map(
  i => image("/images/dummy" + str(i) + ".svg"))
#nup("3x4", pages)

Of course one must try to export these pages and preview them,

Command line helper

The following bash script may be useful for generating a quick multipage preview of a document with the default settings (disclaimer: it hasn’t been tested much),

#!/bin/bash

# Exit on error
set -e

# Parse options
LAYOUT="1x2"  # default
while getopts "l:" opt; do
  case ${opt} in
    l ) LAYOUT="$OPTARG" ;;
    \? ) echo "Usage: nup [-l layout] document.typ"; exit 1 ;;
  esac
done
shift $((OPTIND -1))

# Input file
INPUT_FILE="$1"
if [ -z "$INPUT_FILE" ]; then
  echo "Error: No Typst input file provided."
  exit 1
fi

# Filenames and paths
TMPDIR=$(mktemp -d)
BASENAME=$(basename "$INPUT_FILE" .typ)
NUP_FILE="${TMPDIR}/nup_typst_document.typ"
OUTPUT_PDF="${BASENAME}-nup.pdf"

# Compile original document to SVG pages
typst compile "$INPUT_FILE" "${TMPDIR}/preview{p}.svg"

# Count number of SVG files
NUM_PAGES=$(ls "$TMPDIR"/preview*.svg | wc -l)
UPPER_BOUND=$((NUM_PAGES + 1))

# Generate Typst file to n-up the pages
cat > "$NUP_FILE" <<EOF
#import "@preview/nup:0.1.2": nup
#let pages = range(1, ${UPPER_BOUND}).map(
  i => image("preview" + str(i) + ".svg"))
#nup("${LAYOUT}", pages)
EOF

# Absolute path to output
OUTPUT_PNG="$(pwd)/${BASENAME}-nup.png"

# Move into TMPDIR and compile the nup document from there
(
  cd "$TMPDIR"
  typst compile --ppi 200 "$(basename "$NUP_FILE")" "$OUTPUT_PNG"
  optipng "$OUTPUT_PNG"
)


# Clean up
rm -r "$TMPDIR"

echo "Done! Output written to $OUTPUT_PNG"