print on both sides of the paper, my workaround for multiple copies

[Peter Flynn]

On 29/10/2022 14:59, David Fletcher wrote:
> Since then it's been a right PITA especially getting double sided
> printing out of non duplex printers. 
[...]> My printer takes paper from the top of the tray and puts the single
> side printed sheets face down on the output tray so that when I turn
> them over and put them back into the paper tray they get picked up
> again in the same order so in my case I need to print even sheets
> first, forward order, collated, then the same with the odd sheets.

It may help to understand the difference between work-and-turn, 
work-and-twist, and work-and-tumble, the three orientations used for 
centuries in the printing industry.

> This USED to work absolutely fine but suddenly the damned system
> started adding a blank sheet at the end of each of multiple copies

That would certainly be an evil move, probably by well-meaning but 
ignorant marketing people believing that this will improve the user 
experience.

> What I do now is, get LibreOffice to print to a pdf file instead [...]
> Job done.

Once it's in PDF format, there are dozens of useful open source tools 
that will rearrange pages for printing in various ways, including pdftk, 
pdftopdf, pdfnup, and lots more.

> Mental gymnastics can be required to figure out the procedure to do
> this for other printers. [...] Suggest the writing of a procedure

Yes, Everyone in the graphics and typesetting industry has their own set 
of shortcuts to cope with the insanities of printer driver design.

Peter