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

[Douglas McGArrett]

On 10/29/22 11:38, Peter Flynn wrote:
> 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
>
I hope I don't have to go the PDF route, but at least it would be 
doable, with a batch of extra work.  I wonder if the folks who write 
this software
ever read these comments from the users? I would hazard a guess that 
almost all printers sold today at a level above grade school use, will
print on both sides. Ah, well. . . .

--doug