Easy double-sided printing

[Wouter Stomp]

Binary package hint: cupsys

Several printer drivers in windows allow you to easily print double sided on printers that can't do that automatically. In ubuntu this should be just as easy with a nice gui. A well done implementation of this can be found called GtkPSproc. See http://www.rastersoft.com/gtkpsproc.html for images of how the gui should look like.

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

not a cups issue

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

not a gutenprint issue

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

libgnomeprint already allows you to print more than one page per sheet. This was broken in dapper for a while (see bug 34112), but fixed months ago. Can you please confirm that it still doesn't work for you, and if so, give some details? (the application you are using, etc.)

[Wouter Stomp (wouterstomp-deactivatedaccount)]

That is not what I mean. Printing more than one page per sheet is not the same as double-sided printing. What I would like is a GUI that helps you easily print documents double sided. I.e. it first prints all odd pages, then prompts you to put the stack of paper back into the printer with pictures showing how to put them back (which side up and on top) and then prints the even pages (in the right order).

Actually this was what my HP deskjet printer driver on windows 98 used to do and it was really nice... (the win xp builtin driver doesn't have this capability anymore) It would be a great feature if ubuntu could do this with any printer.

[Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter)]

This is an interesting feature request, but it cannot be assigned to one package. It needs to be implemented in the printing dialog. So currently you would have to suggest this separately to the KDE/Qt, GNOME/GTK, and some application folks (OpenOffice.org, Scribus, ...), but not to the package maintainers of this or any other Linux distribution. You should suggest this to the upstream developers. In the future it is planned to offer common printing dialogs linked to the applications vis tthe Portland interface (http://portland.freedesktop.org/), so you should probably also make your suggestion there.

[Wouter Stomp (wouterstomp-deactivatedaccount)]

Perhaps this could be something to implement for ubuntu (gnome/gtk) in edgy+1? Maybe I will try to write a spec for this when I have time. Forwarding this suggestion upstream sounds like a good idea, however, I don't want to create all those accounts for bugzilla's etc. just to file one feature request, but if someone else is willing to forward this upstream and link it here that would be great!

[Wouter Stomp (wouterstomp-deactivatedaccount)]

I attached the images as they were shown for my hp deskjet printer, to show you how this could work.

[Ante Karamatić (ivoks)]

It would be nice option, but I don't see how we could have one set of images for all users. This pictures from HP are OK for that type of HP printer, but not even for all HP printers. Adding pictures will only confuse users who's printer doesn't look like that and who's printer feeds papers in some other way (face down, or rotated for 90*, etc...).

Printing only odd and only even pages is implemented in Edgy (Page Setup -> Only print:).

My vote goes for rejecting this bug.

[Sebastian Rode (sebastian-ro-deactivatedaccount)]

My vote, too. When somebody not thinking so to reopen the bug report you can click on the current status, under the Status column, and change the Status back to "New". Thanks again!

[thegizmoguy (thegizmoguy)]

In my opinion, this feature is a necessity. I'm a college student and I need to be able to print double sided copies 90% of the time. In windows I just say "do both sides" click "go", and it prints the odd pages upside down and then I take the paper stack, reinsert it and click "go" again.

You could just add some simple images where the user clicks how his printer looks i.e. tray->rollove or tray->straight through or back-> front straight through etc etc. I'm going to nominate this for Jaunty just because I think it is absolutely a must-have.

[Suco (sucotronic)]

Three years from reporting and nobody from printing team says something?

[Ian Clark (blacktuzi)]

Just got a CUPS "update" a couple days ago via Ubuntu updates. When I went to print with my Samsung ML-1430 today, I found that the interface is changed in both Abiword and OOO, and I can no longer specify (manually) to print odds and then evens (to print both sides). Now there is a "range" feature which doesn't even allow me to type in the number of the page, but for a five-page document I'd have to click the first field's up arrow four times from one to five just to get a "five to five" range, to simple print the fifth page. However made this change needs his head examined.

In Abiword, there is a choice I can check called "selection", but there's nothing after it that I can specify. Under OOO, the "selection" choice is grayed out.

Why is it that as I use Ubuntu (starting from 7.10), the features get less and less? Why should I be able to print more conveniently in 2006 than in 2009?

[johny (johny454)]

I agree with Ian; This is a huge problem to set odd and even pages manually.
We're almost on Karmick still missing this feature.

My vote goes for reopening this bug

[Suco (sucotronic)]

For more info I let three links to related ideas in brainstorm:
http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/20216/
http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/19854/
http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/3332/