[PLUG] Laserjet 8000

[John Jason Jordan]

On Sat, 29 Jul 2006 13:49:01 -0700
Aaron Ten Clay <aaron at madebyai.com> dijo:

> > I can print to it just fine. The problem is being unable to access a
> > key feature of the printer that I need. The feature is printing
> > multiple copies collated without concatenating individual print jobs to
> > a massive spool file ("RIP once, print many").

> Ah, I've used the feature you speak of. I'm almost certain this 
> feature is implemented by the driver itself in Windows, not anything 
> printer-specific. However, I've not seen such a feature using HPLIP 
> before. The Canon BJC-4400 Gutenprint driver has a setting for this, 
> available in the CUPS web interface. If your driver had such a setting, 
> that's where you'd find it.

Hmmm, Gutenprint. I've heard of it, but haven't checked it out. Thanks
for the idea. I'll google and find out more about it.

In the meantime I discovered that the problem is not in the driver, not
in CUPS, not in the printer, and not in Linux. It's in the application.
How do I know this? Because I have now accomplished it, just not with
the app I was trying to use.

I had been trying to print 100 copies collated of a 276 page book in
PDF format. I started trying to use Adobe Reader 7.08. I chose Adobe
Reader because Adobe Reader 7.0 on my Windows desktop does this without
a problem. But Reader 7.08 on Linux does not. It just continuously
concatenates print jobs to one mammoth spool file. You can imagine how
big the spool file would be. Plus, printing is slow, you don't get job
offset in the output stacker, etc. 

When I discovered that it didn't work, I tried the command line. First
I tried printing the PDF file directly. The command I used was "lp -d
Laserjet-8000 -n 2." (I started with two copies just to see if it would
work.) It printed one copy and stopped. I switched to "lpr -P
Laserjet-8000 -# 2." Got the same results. Then I tried putting the -n
in different places, but still no luck. Finally I installed two more
printers in CUPS, and repeated the commandline experiment. Still no
luck.

> I'm not an expert on printing, but it may be possible to print to a 
> postscript file and use some nifty commandline tools to seperate 
> each page into it's own file, then queue each individual file the same 
> number of times.

That was the next thing I tried. I used Adobe Reader 7.08 to print to a
PostScript file, then used the lp and lpr commands to print it. Still
no joy. Worse, Adobe Reader hosed a graphic on the first page by
deciding it was underneath the text when it was really on top. I didn't
bother to figure out why -- it didn't work anyway.

And then I decided to install other PDF viewers. I already had Evince,
but its print dialog is pathetic. Searching in Synaptic I found Kpdf,
and that was the secret. It happily prints multiple copies collated
just like Adobe Reader 7.0 does on my Windows desktop. That is, except
that the first copy out is unbearably slow. But at least it works. More
important, it proves where the problem lies. At least now I can quit
fiddling with CUPS, drivers, PPD files, and the command line.

> I've seen lots of folks on the list reference the postscript tool suite, 
> perhaps one of them knows how this would be possible, if it is.

Another thing to google on. 

Thanks for the suggestions.