Re: [gentoo-user] Scanning double sided documents and printing them the same.

[Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org>]

On Wed, Dec 9, 2020 at 7:09 PM Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> How do I print them the
> same way tho?

I didn't see much discussion on the printing side of this - how to
print two-sided on a one-sided printer.

Step 1 (optional): I created a CUPS queue for such jobs that just
outputs everything into PDF in a directory.  This lets you easily
print stuff that isn't already PDF from various computers/OSes and
accumulate a bunch as printing this way is easier in bulk since it
involves a bit of manual manipulation.

Step 2 (optional): I have a script that takes each PDF and adds a
blank page if needed to result in an even number of pages, then
concatenates all the PDFs into a single file.  I probably stole this
from somewhere:

#!/bin/bash
for file in *.pdf
do
  #get the number of pages
  numberofpages=`pdftk "$file" dump_data | sed -e
'/NumberOfPages/!d;s/NumberOfPages: //'`
  echo -n "$file" 'has' $numberofpages 'pages, '

  uneven=$(($numberofpages % 2))
  if [ $uneven == 1 ]
  then
    echo 'which is uneven - added 1 more'
    tempfile=`mktemp`
    pdftk A="$file" B=/usr/local/share/blank.pdf cat A B1 output "$tempfile"
    mv $tempfile $file
  else
    echo 'which is even'
  fi
done

pdftk *.pdf cat output out.pdf

Step 3: To print a single PDF double-sided follow this guide:
http://duramecho.com/ComputerInformation/HowToDoTwoSidedPrinting/index.html

So the idea is that I accumulate a bunch of documents to print this
way, combine them such that they can be printed all at once, and then
do the page flip technique in that guide.  No need to worry about
individual pages as long as you ID which type of printer you have and
follow the appropriate process.  However, to print multiple documents
at once this way they all have to have an even number of pages, which
is why I have the script.  Concatenating the files with blank pages
added means that you can just print the whole thing once, flip, then
print it again, and it all works.

-- 
Rich