Arch Linux

Zanton

Member

Registered: 2005-12-06

Posts: 80

Printer : print several pages on a single one

Hi all,

Here is a quite common problem I didn't solve yet : I have a pdf file of 70 pages, and to save some paper I'd like to print 2 (or 4) pages on a single sheet of paper. I have a laser printer Brother HL-2030.

From Brother's website the printer (HL-2030 and many others I guess) can do it, but I can't find the option allowing to do it. Did anyone find a solution to this problem ? I dunno if it's related to driver or cups configuration or something else.

Any help is welcomed

Last edited by Zanton (2007-10-04 09:23:20)

colinzhengj

Member

From: Cambridge, MA

Registered: 2007-03-20

Posts: 23

Website

Re: Printer : print several pages on a single one

Get "psnup"

Matt3o

Member

From: Firenze, Italy

Registered: 2007-09-13

Posts: 177

Re: Printer : print several pages on a single one

In gnome you can use evince > print > page setup > pages per side > (from 1 to 16)

ps: just saw psnup, very nice

Zanton

Member

Registered: 2005-12-06

Posts: 80

Re: Printer : print several pages on a single one

I wrote a pdf file in my OP (and I don't like gnome ^^), but it's a more general problem imo.

psnup seems good, but I'm at work now, so no Arch to test it. I guess psnup is easily usable with Firefox where u can specify the command line to print, but is it the same way for others applications ?

colinzhengj

Member

From: Cambridge, MA

Registered: 2007-03-20

Posts: 23

Website

Re: Printer : print several pages on a single one

Many apps dont have such flexibility. Here's how i would do it:
1. create a script called lpr-2, that runs the actual lpr on the Postscript converted into 2up.
2. bind a keyboard shortcut to somehow make lpr-2 the current "lpr". You can simply rename lpr-2 into lpr and move it to a path in $PATH that overrides /usr/bin
3. bind another shortcut to restore that
Now you can use the shortcuts to switch between 1up and 2up.
Works for all apps since they all just call lpr when you choose to print

HTH

Last edited by colinzhengj (2007-10-05 03:03:06)

Zanton

Member

Registered: 2005-12-06

Posts: 80

Re: Printer : print several pages on a single one

Thanks for the tip colinzhengj.

Anyway I looked at evince which indeed has the feature incorporated in its printing "wizard" (PW).

After some searches I saw some GTK apps using the same PW, and others like OOo have their own. Is there a way to choose the PW for any app (I guess not as you colinzhengj invite to use a modified lpr) or at least, can someone tell me what's the name of the PW used by Evince ? Is it the gnome one ?

bt

Member

Registered: 2007-04-11

Posts: 198

Re: Printer : print several pages on a single one

acroread has a multi-page option in its printbox -- two or four (or more) pages per side. Works for me.

CUPS also has a number-up (-o number-up=4) command, ...BUT... it is flawed because it does not blank out other pages that you may not want. If you only want pages 1-4, you now get the entire file - four pages to a sheet. Earlier versions of CUPS did not have this error.

Last edited by bt (2007-10-09 12:30:22)