Merging two a5 pages into a singe a4 page (without using pdfnup)
On Debian/Ubuntu, I managed to merge 2xA5 to 1xA4 for printing, using simple commands, by:
# apt-get install ghostscript pdftk psutils
pdftk A=A5-1.pdf B=A5-2.pdf cat A1 B1 output - \
| pdf2ps -dLanguageLevel=3 - - \
| psnup -2 -Pa5 -pa4 \
| ps2pdf -dCompatibility=1.4 - A4.pdf
You can do it with a combination of Ghostscript and pdftk.
Here's how: https://superuser.com/questions/191373/linux-based-tool-to-chop-pdfs-into-multiple-pages/192293#192293 .
The above linked example shows how to split pages into half. Just modify the steps accordingly, using different parameters to...
- ...first move "left" pages to a double-sized canvas, left half;
- ...then move "right" pages to a double-sized canvas, right half;
- ...last, combine the pages with
pdftk.
Update:
Hint: You'd want to use either of pdftk's multistamp or multibackground operations (NOT: its shuffle operation!) to get the wanted final result.