This one goes out to all of the MacOS X users out there. (For the rest of you, why aren’t you switching?) Perhaps you have seen PocketMod — the origami-like manipulation of an 8 1/2″ by 11″ piece of paper into an 8-page booklet.

Example PocketMod, courtesy of the Boston Globe.

Touted as a way to “get back to the basics” using analog media over digital media, it is a scheme by which you can transform pages of text into a pocket-sized form for carrying around. Many use it as a way to synchronize their digital to-do lists with the analog world, while others use it document shortcuts and cheat-sheets in a convenient form.

I’m migrating from Thinking Rock to iGTD as my Getting Things Done tool-of-choice. One of the things I’m missing about Thinking Rock is its built-in ability to create PocketMods for the actions in the GTD system. The only real easy way to create the PocketMod format was via a Flash applet or a Windows application. Some have set up shell scripts or worked with other programs, but I was looking for something as simple as the MacOS X print dialog box. And with a little bit of Automator, Java, and shell scripting, it is possible!

Step 1: Get the “Multivalent” PDF Manipulation Toolkit

Step 2: Create the Automator Action

In the ‘Run Shell Script’ action, change “Pass input” to “as arguments” then replace “cat” in the command box with this (ignoring any line breaks that may appear here — this text should be entered without line breaks):

cat "$1" > /tmp/temp$$.pdf && java -classpath [location]/Multivalent20060102.jar tool.pdf.Impose -dim 2x4 -layout "1l,2r,8l,3r,7l,4r,6l,5r" -paper letter -verbose /tmp/temp$$.pdf 2> /tmp/temp$$.err && open /tmp/temp$$-up.pdf

Replace [location] with the complete file path where you downloaded the Multivalent20060102.jar file. The final results should look something like this:

Now save this as “PocketModMac” in either the “/Library/PDF Services” directory (to make it available to all users of your machine) or to “Library/PDF Services” in your home directory for just you.

Step 3: Using PocketModMac

After a few seconds, the Preview application will open up with the PocketMod-ed document. Print this document as you would to any printer, then follow the directions for folding and cutting the page to create your booklet.

Troubleshooting and Known Issues

This isn’t necessarily a very nice solution because it leaves files laying around in the /private/tmp directory after it is done. The /etc/periodic/daily/500.daily maintenance script will clean them out automatically after three days, but still — it is somewhat sloppy to leave them around.