seeking howto printing 2-up duplex ... correctly
 

I have a large number of multipage documents that are reference materials. Not often, but routinely I want to make a paper edition for detailed study or review & revision. (I'm still searching for tools so that I can do this electronically, but no joy yet.) Most often I'm printing from Okular or some other PDF reader.

I want to print 2-pages to the face of a standard letter page, turn on the short edge and print 2-pages on the reverse face of the same page. Next sheet.

From a reading viewpoint:

• sheet 1 face
  • left -- page #1
  • right -- page #2
• sheet 1 reverse
  • left -- page #3
  • right -- page #4
• sheet 2 face

I get most of what I want -- 4-pages on one sheet of letter stock. However, the reverse face is printed upside down.

From a reading viewpoint:

• sheet 1 face
  • left -- page #1
  • right -- page #2
• sheet 1 reverse
  • left -- page #4 upside down
  • right -- page #3 upside down
• sheet 2 face

It looks as if the "duplex processing" is turning on the long edge of each sheet, but I've requested a short edge turn. I've tried setting this in both the document reader and in the printer control without success.

CUPS reports that it is v1.5 (at the web page interface). I'm running Linux Mint-12 (Ubuntu v11.10)
using an HP-8600 All-in-One printer with duplex option.

Please help, people

Someone out there can help me sort out why I cannot get 2-up duplex to work correctly.

To add more fuel to the analysis, it seems that when I use the application to ask for
2-up, short-side duplex, the application does not interact with CUPS to cause the
queue then printer to receive those instructions. It almost works if I tell the application
what I want and then tell the queue to do the same thing.

Most often the application is either LibreOffice or it is Okular or AdobeReader for PDF files.
I've had troubles from both 'gedit' and 'emacs' printing large text files, but I don't
do that often enough to have a pattern of mis-behavior.

Thanks in advance,
~~~ 0;-Dan

Searching around the web, I found this article https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=135445 that speaks about troubles (1)making settings with the print dialog, and (2) having those settings actually take effect with the selected CUPS printer.

The trouble description sounds very similar to the trouble I'm having. In this case, they are talking about KDE in general. I'm trying to use various PDF-reader apps (and a few others) on a GNOME-based workstation. The fact that a print-dialog is not talking with the CUPS printer queue may have more than one manifestation or this might be the same thing that only looks different due to GNOME vs. KDE details.


Follow-Up:
Since I'm having trouble with Okular a large resounding, "Doh" is needed because
Okular is a KDE desktop application.

Since there is a known problem (see link above) with KDE and printing through CUPS,
I've stumbled into a cross-desktop problem space.

Now I hope to find some folks who can help with this KDE issue.


Still searching for help,
~~~ 0;-Dan