Duplexing sometimes fails from Acrobat Reader

[John A. Murdie]

I've had a user here report that documents he prints from Acrobat Reader never appear double-sided (duplexed), despite this setting being the site default here, or even when he commands this explicitly. (All CUPS printer configurations here have duplexing set as the default; of course, a user can override this when printing transparencies etc!) This from Acrobat Reader 7.0.8 on Linux. When I print from the same version on the same version of Linux, I can duplex. My guess is that something in the generated PostScript from 7.0.8 is causing CUPS' filter-added duplex settings not to work. The problem is NOT caused by the Adobe Acrobat Reader 7.0.8 bug which writes an lp(1)/lpr(1) command using one comma-separated list of options with a single -o; we know about that one (e.g. Reader writes '-o landscape,sides=two-sided-short-edge', which CUPS ignores).

(By the way, Acrobat Reader 8.1.1 fixes the bugs I reported to do with duplex collation - see http://www.cups.org/newsgroups.php?gcups.general+v:27349, and also the comma-separated option bug - see http://www.cups.org/newsgroups.php?gcups.general+v:27631 - though we've seen 8.1.1 crash in circumstances when 7.0.8 is ok.)

The difference between the working and the non-working PostScript is that the non-working version has:

mark {<</DeferredMediaSelection false >> setpagedevice }stopped cleartomark
{<</PageSize [842.0 595.0] /Policies <</PageSize 1>> >> setpagedevice }stopped
 pop

in every page's PageSetup. When I comment all these out, the non-working PostScript then works.

But I haven't yet found the difference between the user's Acrobat Reader preferences settings and my own which is provoking this problem.

(My work-around was to ask him to print the PDF file directly with 'lpr -o sides=two-sided-...'.)

What might be responsible for the problem, and what is the correct fix? Any ideas?

John A. Murdie