Department of Mathematics

Linux - How to duplex print to grad lab printer lw

The printer lw in the Love building Math graduate computer lab in 004D LOV has duplex printing capability. This page will show you how to print your jobs to take advantage of this feature.

Jobs printed using duplex options grant a 35% quota discount (rounded) for the job. For example, if you print a 12 page document, your quota would only be charged for 8 pages.

Command Line Printing

To duplex print to lw using the command line, use the "-o" flag with the "sides" option as follows:

lpr -Plw -o sides=two-sided-long-edge myfile.ps
lpr -Plw -o sides=two-sided-short-edge myfile.ps

The first line above would print the file myfile.ps double-sided with the binding on the long edge of the paper. This is the most commonly used method and corresponds to pages formatted in portrait mode.

The second line above would print the file myfile.ps double-sided with the binding on the short edge of the paper. This corresponds to pages formatted in landscape mode.

The "-Plw" is not necessary if lw is your default printer.

Printing from Within Applications

Within most applications, you can use the print dialog boxes to choose double-sided printing. However, in many of them you have to pick Print from the File menu in order to see these boxes. If you print from a printer icon, it will immediately print to the printer you have set as default without giving you a chance to set the duplex options.

Some older applications do not support choosing printer options from a dialog box. For these you can put the "-o" option described above into the lpr command that will print the job.

Examples from popular applications of both types are given below.

Adobe PDF Viewer (acroread)

1. Choose lw from the printer list drop-down box
2. Click the Properties button
3. In the new dialog box, click on the 2-sided Printing options to highlight it, and then choose either Long-Edge Binding or Short-Edge Binding depending on whether your document is formatted in portrait or landscape mode, respectively.

Firefox

To get to the printer dialog box to be able to set duplex printing, you need to chose Print from the File menu or use ctrl+P from the keyboard.

1. Be sure to choose lw from the printer list under the General tab.
2. Then, from the Page Setup tab, use the drop-down box of the Two-sided option to choose either Long Edge (Standard) or Short Edge (Flip) depending on whether your document is formatted in portrait or landscape mode, respectively.

Open Office

To get to the printer dialog box to be able to set duplex printing, you need to chose Print from the File menu or use ctrl+P from the keyboard.

1. Choose lw from the printer list drop-down box
2. Click the Properties button
3. In the new dialog box, use the drop-down menu of the Duplex option to choose either Long-Edge Binding or Short-Edge Binding depending on whether your document is formatted in portrait or landscape mode, respectively.

XPDF Viewer (xpdf)

Add the appropriate -o option to the lpr command-line string in the dialog box. Use "-o sides=two-sided-long-edge" for portrait documents and "-o sides=two-sided-short-edge" for landscape documents.