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Last Updated: Wed Jun 09 14:13:46 BST 2004

Printing Tips

Platform: Linux, UNIX
Requirements: Ghostscript, Ghostview

Print Preview

If you'd like to preview your printout before sending it to the printer, select "Print To File" from your application. then view the resulting file with Ghostview (gv) before printing it.

Alternatively, set up your application to print with the ps-preview script below, rather than lpr (or lp).

Manual Duplexing

If you want to do duplex printing on a single sided printer, you can use Ghostview for that too. Mark the odd numbered pages (there's a button for it), print the marked pages, then reinsert them into the paper tray the other way up, select the even numbered pages and then print them onto the back of the odd numbered pages. (Don't reinsert the last odd numbered page if you're printing an odd number of pages).

Resources

ps-preview: You can use this shell script to replace lpr when printing from applications. It will use Ghostview (gv) to preview the Postscript output, allowing you to print selected pages or do manual duplexing.
Save this file onto your $PATH, and make it executable.

07/Apr/2000 - ps-preview now accepts an optional -2 argument that will do 2-up printing (2 half-size pages on a single page) if the psnup (from psutils package) is available on your system.
Note: If you're viewing a document in Ghostview and you want to see it in 2-up form you can just select "Print All" and enter "ps-preview -2" as the printer command. (And if you do this again you'll end up with 4-up etc.)