Re: fake duplex page reordering? [patch]

[Rob Mahurin <rob@xxxxxxx>]

On Tue, Feb 26, 2002 at 07:31:35PM +0100, Michael Lo?in wrote:
> [cc: to Rob]

Thanks!

> On 25-Feb-02 Rob Mahurin wrote:
> > I have just discovered apsfilter and its fake duplex option, which
> > does the conversion cruft for me and has a much nicer restarting
> > mechanism, which I like.  Unfortunately it doesn't reverse the odd
> > pages, which means that I have to reorder all of the pages twice
> > (once feeding them back in for the odd sides, and again before
> > stapling them).  I am lazy and dislike this.  :)  How to fix it?
> 
> The problem is that there are a couple of paper feeding
> mechanisms:
[...list...]
> ...and maybe some more.
> 
> So at least we need two distinct variables that control
> reverse mode for odd *and* even pages.

It seems that you could span the spectrum with
DUPLEX_REVERSE_{ODD,EVEN} and a DUPLEX_ODD_FIRST:  control which
parity comes out first, and the order of both.  

[...]
> BUT :)  if I replace the "print even pages" part with
> [blah]
> it works as expected. (My printer needs one LF with one FF
> to spit out a blank page.)
> 
> The big question is: Is this a portable way to create a
> blank page? (I hope so...) However, it should not a big
> problem to introduce a BLANK_PAGE='\012\014' variable,
> let the user adjust it for his printer and then use
> ... && printf "$BLANK_PAGE"

Sounds reasonable.  I seem to remember wrestling with that problem and
choosing the "almost blank" page rather than learn Postscript --- one
little dot doesn't bother me. :)

> > Thanks for writing such clear code, by the way.
> 
> Who, me?  ;^D

Apparently.

Rob

-- 
You can write a small letter to Grandma in the filename.
		-- Forbes Burkowski, CS, University of Washington