David A. Harding
Friday, 14 Oct 2005
6 Months ago I bought a new laser printer: a HP LaserJet 1320. This is my first experience with a printer that can automatedly print on both sides of the paper (duplex). (Before, I printed duplex the manual way: print the odd pages, re-feed the paper, and print the even pages.) I'm happy and impressed, and the native PostScript support makes this printer a cinch to configure.
I like duplexing because it balances my stinginess and my desire for
printed matter. I always copyedit a copy of my important articles on
paper, and sometimes I print out long articles I download for reading.
I've even printed GNU Free Documentation Licensed books. Unfortunately,
I'm not able to to tell the PPD, by way of the print spooler, when to
print duplex. I've throughly read the lpr manual page, googled for
help, and tried other commands, like mpage, without success.
The hack I began using—to my annoyance—required sshing to the
server my printer was connected to and editing the PPD to force duplex
on. To turn off duplexing, I reversed the edit. After a long time being
fustrated, I thought of a simplier hack. I made a a copy of the PPD with
duplexing turned on and left the original PPD with duplex turned off.
Then I made a duplicate of the existing printer entry in /etc/printcap,
changed the name of the duplicate to Duplex|duplex, and pointed the
duplicate's PPD entry to the copied PPD.
Now, when I want to print duplex, I tell the print spooler to use the second (virtual) printer. It's as easy as changing lpr to lpr -P duplex.
If you have a similar printer, a similar problem, and you need any help, contact me, and I will try to help you.