PostScript document not printing double-sided

[Helge Blischke]

John A. Murdie wrote:
> Johannes Meixner wrote:
> 
>>Hello,
>>
>>On Mar 5 09:28 John A.Murdie wrote (shortened):
>>
>>>I have a PostScript document given to me by a user here
>>>which will not print double-sided
>>
>>....
>>
>>>Other ... PostScript files print double-sided as expected.
>>
>>I.e. it depends on how the PostScript file was created.
>>
>>For example the psutils are known to cause such problems.
>>Some time ago on this mailing list the reason was explained:
>>-------------------------------------------------------------
>>The culprit is the pstops utility from the PSUtils package.
>>It inserts a procset into the PS job just after the
>>header comments which - among other tings - defines the
>>setpagedevice operator as a noop.
>>Thus, any defaults defined by your printer's PPD or given
>>as options in the print command are just ignored.
>>The only chance you'd have is with printers that need things
>>like media size, duplexing or the like to be specified by PJL
>>commands or with native IPP printers that natively support
>>these attributes via the IPP interface.
>>-------------------------------------------------------------
>>...
> 
> 
> Thank you, Johannes - that may well have been the problem. Stupidly, I have accidentally deleted the original file, so have lost the evidence. I could get it back from the archive, but that would take more time than I have at the minute.
> 
> 
>>I.e. the file was a PDF which was somehow translated into
>>PostScript? How was it translated?
>>...
> 
> 
> The PostScript was actually produced by latex/dvips. I don't know whether they used the PSUtils pstops(1) on it, but I'll warn the user about that, as I know that they do use this sometimes.
> 
> What I meant was that had they used a correct PDF to PostScript translator, this problem would not have arisen.
> 
> 
>>Kind Regards
>>Johannes Meixner
> 
> 
> Many thanks,
> 
> John A. Murdie
> 
IIRC, dvips uses (the PostScript level1) media size names like A4, Letter, etc.
to specify the page size, if they are defined within the interpreter, but
most level2 and higher interpreters don't support these old stuff.

Moreover, the jobs generated by dvips(k) are not really DSC compliant, so
CUPS's pstops filter will probably treat these files not as expected.

I've hacked a filter script (written in Perl) that fixes these issues, but
the documentation is currently only in german. If requested, I could easily
translate the description to english and publish this filter on the CUPS web site.

Helge


-- 
Helge Blischke
Softwareentwicklung

H.Blischke at acm.org