Can CUPS print two-sided documents 2-up?

[Tom Moertel]

When documents have been formated for two-sided printing, their pages are designed to appear on the left- and right-hand sides of two-page "spreads."  Traditionally, even-numbered pages appear on the left, and odd-numbered pages on the right.

If you open a book, for example, you'll see that first page (numbered 1) is always a right-hand page:

    +---------+---------+
    |         |         |
    |         | Chapter |    <-- 2-page spread in a real book
    |         | One     |
    |         |         |
    |         |       1 |
    +---------+---------+

Following pages work out like so:

    +---------+---------+
    |   THE ##|## TREE  |
    |      ###|###      |
    |      ###|###      |
    |        #|#        |
    | 2      #|#      3 |
    +---------+---------+

    +---------+---------+
    |         |         |
    |  blah   |  blah   |
    |         |         |
    |         |         |
    | 4       |       5 |
    +---------+---------+

and so on, with evens on the left, and odds on the right:

    +---------+---------+
    |         |         |
    |         |         |
    |         |         |
    |         |         |
    | even    |     odd |
    +---------+---------+


CUPS, however, wants to print page 1 on the left-hand side of the 2-up spreads it generates:

    $ lpr -o number-up=2 two-sided-document.pdf

    +---------+---------+
    |         |   THE ##|
    | Chapter |      ###|    <-- CUPS-generated 2-up spread
    | One     |      ###|
    |         |        #|
    |       1 | 2      #|
    +---------+---------+

    +---------+---------+
    |## TREE  |         |
    |###      |  blah   |
    |###      |         |
    |#        |         |
    |#      3 | 4       |
    +---------+---------+

    +---------+---------+
    |         |         |
    |         |         |
    |         |         |
    |         |         |
    |     odd | even    |
    +---------+---------+

While this is fine for one-sided documents, which have no concept of left- and right-hand pages, it destroys the spreads in two-sided documents.

My question, then, is ---

Is it possible to make CUPS "do then right thing" and preserve spreads when printing two-sided documents 2-up?

Thanks for your help!

Cheers,
Tom