Hello everyone! I hope that this is the correct place to publish a suggestion.
I am interested in double-sided printing as well as skipping pages when printing on one or both sides. Currently, I type into the “Pages” box the numbers of those pages that I need to print in the order they have to be printed.
1st pass, example (a1) 9, 6, 3 or example (b1) 8, 6, 4, 2
After printing, the stacked pages are turned over and the box reads:
(a2) 8, 5, 2 or (b2) 7, 5, 3, 1
This is an ink-jet printer which deposits the inked page facing up. Some printers place the printed page down; in that case, the sequence only needs to be changed.
It would be nice not to have to type the commas.
If the page count is odd, the last sheet is printed on only one side.
Example (a1´) 6, 3. Therefore, after turning the stack over, one must put an empty page on top of it before inserting the stack again. If one forgets to do this, the entire print job is wasted.
To facilitate various arrangements of pages for double-sided printing, I imagine something like this:
(a1) 9…2 -3 meaning pages 9, 6, 3 which is greater than 2. Turn it over and insert. Type into the box
(a2) 8…1 -3 meaning pages 8, 5 and 2 which is greater than 1. This way, page 2 will be on the top, page 3 is on its backside, followed by 5 and 6 and finally by 8 and 9. Pages are in sequence (“reading order”) with missing pages as desired.
Assuming that page 9 exists, but one does not want to print it, an empty sheet must be fed through so that in the second path, page 8 can be printed on its backside. This is indicated by the single prime symbol like this:
Example (a1) 9’…2 3 meaning an empty sheet followed by pages 6 and 3.
The three consecutive dots are an internationally recognized symbol which means “until” or “and so forth”. “x…y” shall mean “from x until less than y”. In my opinion, it is better to use this ellipsis instead of the dash or minus sign (e.g., 1-5, 7, 9-12) because the dash with numbers usually means subtraction.
Normally, listed symbols, numbers or words are separated by a comma, but in this case, there are only page numbers and an absent comma does not create ambiguity. No need to write 9’,…,2 3 . (You might like to read about ellipsis in Wikipedia)
In the case of an interval x…y, the last number “z” increments the page numbers if x < y, or decrements them if x > y. In this example, typing in a 3 acceptable and is automatically corrected to -3 or +3.
However, in the case of only a starting page number, the increment has to be signed if the sequence is diminishing. Otherwise, it can be omitted and the plus symbol is automatically inserted.
Example (c1) 6 +2, meaning 6, 8, 10, 12 …, all even-numbered pages as many as exist, starting with page 6. If the total page count is an odd number, the last sheet is fed through, then the stack is turned over for printing the second pass:
Example (c2) 7 +2, meaning 7, 9, … until the last page.
This seems to be a simple way to arrange double-sided printing as well as systematic intermittent one-sided or double-sided printing without having to “clutter up” the page selection frame with many options. The idea is to keep it simple.
How do you all see it?