Multi-page printing in Solaris 10 X86

From: Steve Franks (stevef@frontline.com.au)
Date: Sun Jan 06 2008 - 22:17:40 EST


Hi,

I have Sol 10 X86 U3 on a laptop. I want to print two (or 4 or 8) pages
per sheet (I am not interested in duplexing here as the printer I have
can't do it) to an HP LJ 4200.

The print queue works just fine - but I can't work out the multi-page side.

Firstly, is this function a printer option or a spooler function?

Secondly, how do I make it happen (in both cases)?

I have experimented with mpage et al & this seems to work but to my
mind, I should not need these things since Solaris adopted PPD /
foomatic printing. I do not pretend to be an expert in these things
though. If I wanted to print just text, would I be forced to make my
own filter with mpage to solve the problem?

I have ratted thru the ppd file for the printer & can't actually see any
function / attribute that appears to match what I want to do. I do see
Duplex in there though. This leads me to wonder if the feature is not
actually spooler-side, rather than printer-side.

Looking at netstandard-foomatic interface script I see this :
 # The IPP/PAPI attributes are handled by the foomatic-rip filter so
        # all we need to do here is ignore them so that they don't
invoke the
        # "unrecognized option" message.
        #
        finishing=* | page-ranges=* | sides=* )
                ;;
        number-up=* | orientation-requested=* | media=* )
<<<<<<<<============ I think number-up is what I want

But this tells me to look at the rip engine. OK :
<... extract from foomatic-rip ...>
 # we ignore the following IPP attributes in this filter:
<<<<<<<<<<======= OK, we *don't* do it here after all!!!!
                # - all job-* attributes
                # - 'copies' attributes in the filter as this is handled
                # by the backend script
                # - multiple-document-* is not supported
                # - 'number-up' attribute as this is handled by mode
'group=n' <<<<<<<======= What about "group"?
                # in the filters.

lp -d hp4200 -o group=2 file

makes no difference; the job prints perfectly - but as single page per
sheet.

Aside : when we are dealing with printer or manufacturer-specific
options, is there a simple way to dump out the list rather than working
thru all the relevant scripts?

Note on IPP - I am using raw to TCP port 9100 on the printer as this is
what is recommended by all refs on HP printer setup on Solaris although
to be honest, I am not sure how to use IPP & how it works.

No doubt this would be trivial if I could use Jet Direct Printer
Installer - but this is not available for Sol x86 :(

Any feedback greatly appreciated - by me /and/ the world's forests!

Steve
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