Watch a sheet of paper fold into a book.
QuireMaker is a free browser tool for students learning how early books were made. You paste in some text, pick a format (folio, quarto, octavo, or sextodecimo), and the tool lays your words onto printer sheets the way a hand-press printer would. Then you can print those sheets, fold them, and hold a real little gathering in your hands.
A quire (also called a gathering) is a small stack of leaves made by folding one sheet of paper. Fold once and you get a folio. Fold again and you get a quarto. Keep folding and the pages get smaller and more of them appear.
Printers did not print one page at a time. They printed several pages on both sides of a big sheet, then folded it so the pages landed in the right order. That layout step is called imposition. QuireMaker shows you that whole process on screen, then lets you print sheets you can fold yourself.
The tool uses JavaScript modules, and most browsers will not run those if you just double-click index.html. You need to open it through a small local server. It takes one command.
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Download or clone this project.
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Open a terminal in the project folder and start a server:
python3 -m http.server 8000
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Open
http://localhost:8000in a modern browser (Chrome, Firefox, Safari, or Edge).
That is it. If you use an editor like VS Code, the Live Server extension does the same thing with a right-click.
People on other networks will not reach your laptop this way. For a link everyone can open, host the folder on something like GitHub Pages and share that URL instead.
- Pick a format. Folio is 1 fold (4 pages). Quarto is 2 folds (8 pages). Octavo is 3 folds (16 pages). Sextodecimo is 4 folds (32 pages).
- Set a signature mark if you want (usually the letter
A). This is the printer's label for that gathering. - Choose type size and typeface to taste.
- Tick what you want on the page: page numbers, signature marks, catchwords, paragraph breaks, running title, and whether page numbers restart in each gathering.
- Paste your text into the Paste text box. Blank lines become paragraphs when that option is on. Long text spills into as many gatherings as it needs. Nothing gets dropped.
- Press Impose & preview. Watch the sheet fold in the theatre. Scroll down to read the finished pages in order.
- Click a page on the forme maps to spotlight that leaf on both sides of the sheet. Numbers tagged
180°are printed upside down on purpose. They come right side up after you fold. - Press Print. Use duplex (two-sided) printing and flip on the long edge. Fold, nest the sheets, and you have a quire.
There is also a short User Guide on the site if you want a walkthrough with tips.
| Page | What it is |
|---|---|
index.html |
The tool itself |
guide.html |
A simple user guide |
about.html |
How the project started and why it matters |
resources.html |
Links and reading about quires and book history |
credits.html |
The people who built it |
QuireMaker2026/
├── index.html main tool page
├── guide.html user guide
├── about.html project story
├── resources.html extra reading and links
├── credits.html team and thanks
├── css/
│ └── styles.css all the look and feel
├── js/
│ ├── app.js wires up the buttons and controls
│ ├── imposition.js fold math and page layout on the sheet
│ ├── pagination.js splits your text into pages
│ ├── preview.js fold theatre and finished-page preview
│ └── print.js builds the printable sheets
├── images/ logos, photos, and other pictures
├── LICENSE MIT license
└── README.md you are here
Everything runs in the browser with plain HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. There is no build step and no npm.
Pierre wanted a classroom tool so students could feel how books are put together, not only read about it. An early version lived for a couple of years, then stopped working when its old platform went away. The project came to ILiADS 2026 at Vassar College, where the team rebuilt it from scratch as a free, open tool for Book Studies and anyone curious about how a printed sheet becomes a book.
Built at ILiADS 2026 (Vassar College) for use at Carleton College and beyond.
Team:
- Prof. Pierre Hecker, Project Lead, Department of English, Carleton College
- Em Palencia, Academic Technologist, Carleton College
- Dr. Ashlyn Stewart, ILiADS 2026 Liaison, Boston College
- Amine El Messaoudi '28, Digital Humanities Research Assistant, Carleton College
- Sharon Fashola '29, Digital Humanities Research Assistant, Carleton College
This project is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). See LICENSE for the full text.
You are free to share and adapt QuireMaker, including for teaching, as long as you give credit, do not use it commercially, and share any derivative works under the same license.
Full terms: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/