Double Sided Printing in Firefox/Thunderbird

[Paul Howarth]

On Tue, 2005-02-22 at 17:43 -0800, Matt Florido wrote:
> This is the print command configured for my Firefox and Thunderbird:
> lpr ${MOZ_PRINTER_NAME:+'-P'}${MOZ_PRINTER_NAME}
> 
> I would like to know how to send a command through LPR for double-sided 
> printing.  (HPLJ 2200DN using generic PCL 5e driver - FC3)  I can't seem 
> to find any resources that describes how this is performed.  The only 
> thing I could find that was remotely close was a request submitted in 
> for Mozilla 1.5b: http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=213461
> 
> I'd rather not specify dual sided printing in the default settings 
> because it flips all print jobs, including single page jobs.

Here's an alternative suggestion. You can use cups to create an
"instance" of your printer that does double-sided printing by default.
All you need to do then is to tell your application to use that instance
of the printer.

Let's say your printer is called "laser". You can get a list of the
available print options for the printer using the "lpoptions" command:

$ lpoptions -l -p laser
Density/Toner Density: 1 2 *3 4 5
Economode/Economy mode: *Off On
Manualfeed/Manual Feed of Paper: *Off On
MediaType/Media Type: *Normal Bond Card Colored Envelope Labels
Preprinted Transparency
Copies/Number of Copies: *1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18
19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42
43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66
67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90
91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100
PageSize/Page Size: Letter *A4 A5 A6 B5JIS Env10 EnvB5 EnvC5 EnvC6 EnvDL
EnvMonarch Executive Folio Legal
PageRegion/PageRegion: Letter A4 A5 A6 B5JIS Env10 EnvB5 EnvC5 EnvC6
EnvDL EnvMonarch Executive Folio Legal
Resolution/Resolution: 300x300dpi *600x600dpi
TR-Duplex/Duplex: *False True
AllowReprint/Allow use of 'Reprint' button: No *Yes
Altitude/Altitude Correction: High *Low
PowerSaveTime/Idle time to start power save mode (min): *5 10 15 30 45
60
PageTimeout/Page Timeout: *15 30 45
JamRecovery/Reprint Page after Paper Jam: No *Yes
PowerSaving/Use Power Saving Mode: Off *On

This is a list of the options the printer supports. The one you're
interested in is "TR-Duplex" (it may be called something else on your
printer).

What you can do now is create a new printer instance called
"laser/duplex" (just for your use, not a system-wide setting) by
running:

$ lpoptions -p laser/duplex -o TR-Duplex=True

You now effectively have two printers: "laser", which has duplex
printing turned off, and "laser/duplex", which has duplex printing
enabled. Just use the printer instance "laser/duplex" instead of "laser"
when you want double sided printing.

If the lpoptions command is run as root, it can set up printer instances
on a system-wide basis that will work for all users. See "man
lpoptions".

Paul.
-- 
Paul Howarth <paul at city-fan.org>