[cups.general] duplex doesn't work - please help

[Wolfgang Wegner]

Hi Helge,
On Wed, Apr 06, 2005 at 07:33:39AM -0400, Helge Blischke wrote:
> Wolfgang Wegner wrote:
> > OTOH, one could ask why CUPS re-invented a pstops filter instead of
> > fixing & using psutils first...
[...]
> Here's what I think are the reasons:
> (1) Getting the defaults from the printer's PPD (note that the CUPS
> admin
>     may configure default settings different from the delivered
> settings).
> (2) Evaluating a set of job attributes - such as duplex printing - the 
>     implementation of which depends of what the PPD defines.
> (3) Handling collated copies - depending on the capabilities of the 
>     respective printer (some printers can do collated copies by
> themselves,
>     others, like many desktop machines, need the print job repeatedly
> fed
>     in for every copy).

thanks for the possible explanation!

Maybe I simply did not yet understand the architecture of CUPS enough,
but at the moment I think that exactly this is a problem:
why do all the backends/filters/... all have to care for configuration
and job options, why are they not configured with the right parameters
for the actual job by some kind of surrounding script (or more
general framework)?

In my case, I see this problem with my Lexmark 4039: its postscript
is too slow to be usable with "modern" (*sigh*) documents, so I use
ghostscript. However, to be able to use duplex, I have to use the
ljet3d driver (which does duplex and only duplex), if I want to print
simplex, I have to use lj4dith or similar - and this while the
printer perfectly understands PJL (at least when printing postscript
directly via LPRng, I could configure _everything_ with PJL commands,
the only cuplrit was late ifhp versions broke ethernet communication
and PCL printing had the same problem as now with CUPS).

At the moment I am missing some kind of framework or communication
path to set up things and simply forbid ghostscript to include any
hint about simplex/duplex printing and stuff.
(Or better: I am missing some documentation if such a thing does
exist and if so, how I could configure it...)

> Helge

Regards,
Wolfgang