Injecting blank pages (for n-up printing)

[Helge Blischke]

Eugene Rogoza wrote:
>>There is an option
>>	number-up-layout=xxxx
>>where xxxx is one of
>>	lrbt
>>	rltb
>>	rlbt
>>	tblr
>>	btlr
>>	btrl
>>(b=bottom, t=top, l=left, r=right).
> 
> 
> 
> No, you still didn't understand. Take a look at the following 4-up example:
> 
> ***********************************
> * |------------|  |-------------| *
> * |CELL #1.    |  |CELL #3.     | *
> * |Page with   |  |Page with    | *
> * |text        |  |text         | *
> * |------------|  |-------------| *
> *                                 *
> * |------------|                  *
> * |CELL #2.    |                  *
> * |Page with   |                  *
> * |text        |                  *
> * |------------|                  *
> ***********************************
> 
> As you can see, only three cells are filled with actual pages. I'd like to start the next print job from that empty cell, i.e. the first sheet of the next print job must look as follows:
> 
> 
> ***********************************
> *                                 *
> *                                 *
> *                                 *
> *                                 *
> *                                 *
> *                                 *
> *                  |------------| *
> *                  |CELL #4.    | *
> *                  |Page with   | *
> *                  |text        | *
> *                  |------------| *
> ***********************************
> 
> 
> The options you listed just set the order of cells, i.e. whether they are being layouted as #1,#2,#3,#4 or #1,#3,#2,#4 and so on, but ALL the cells are printed.

Well, AFAIK, that cannot be accomplished by CUPS alone. As CUPS is concerned,
the print jobs are INDEPENDENT of each other, there is no "momory" from one job to the next
one.
What you need is a utility to merge several print jobs into one new
job AND preserving DSC conformance (which is needed for the pstops filter
to properly do the n-up).

I guess there are no utilities ready for use around, but you could do that
merge using Ghostscript, creating a huge PDF from the single jobs, for
ecah job counting the pages (by a "hand crafted" PS routine) and then
inserting the blank pages as needed.

You need a some PostScript programming skills to do that, but the
resulting PDF can easily printed by CUPS as requested.

Helge

-- 
Helge Blischke
Softwareentwicklung
SRZ Berlin | Firmengruppe besscom
http://www.srz.de