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by JKCalhoun 1458 days ago
No, I totally prefer Preview. (I worked on Preview for many years though.)

Besides the odd PDF that CoreGraphics/PDFKit can't handle, I like that Reader gives me "booklet printing" in page setup so that I can print 2-up with the correct page ordering to get a (5 ½ x 8 ½, U.S.) folded book in the end.

I like nothing else about Reader.
1 comments
OnlyMortal 1458 days ago
Ah ok. Some basic pagination features then.

You might take a look at this: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-RpNFa6_OiY

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JonathonW 1458 days ago
For those who don't want to click through for the video, macOS has booklet printing system-wide (in anything that uses the standard Print dialog); it's one of the options for two-sided printing in the Layout section of the print dialog.
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JKCalhoun 1458 days ago
Holy hell, when did they add the Booklet option to Page Setup?

EDIT: Wait, I don't see that in Preview, MacOS Monterey. I wonder if it is a feature of the printer driver (tried both my Brother and HP, no go).

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OnlyMortal 1458 days ago
I’d be surprised if it was a printer only thing. The 2up would be a software thing typically.

I used to work on Agfa’s RIP back in the day.

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mgsouth 1457 days ago
I recall it being printer-specific also. Dell laser would do it, Brother (?) wouldn't. There was even an app (Booklet Maker?) for n-up challenged printers.

I imagine it's a printer-implemented feature, like duplex, with a very high-level option flag. A Postscript printer with a full-page RIP buffer could probably do it pretty easily if it wasn't extremely resource constrained. A RIP that did banding internally, re-compositing the PS source several times (are there [still] such things?) would have a hard time. A bitmapped printer (the cheap all-in-ones) would need to hold the entire page in memory on the Mac. Back in the day (way, way back), at least, drivers would process in bands, and the apps were required to re-draw the relevant parts of the page for each band. There wasn't any provision in the API to work on multiple pages at once. I don't know if application-level banding is still a thing, but could see echoes of incompatibility remaining.

Edit: n-up implemented in the OS can be tricky for Postscript printers. It requires nesting pages inside pages. Ill-mannered, but legal, Postscript can cause issues. It might be better with newer versions of PS, but the OS would still need to support older printers with old versions.

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