Duplex Printing in Portrait and Landscape Presentations

Duplex printing with PPFA and your print server printers offers several other options. This example shows the combination of portrait and landscape presentations with normal and tumble duplex printing.

NORMAL and TUMBLE are parameters of a DUPLEX subcommand. For example, a form definition specifying DUPLEX NORMAL could be written this way:

FORMDEF ABCD ;
  COPYGROUP ABCD
            DUPLEX NORMAL ;
    SUBGROUP BOTH
             COPIES 1 ;

Document A in Figure DUPLEX NORMAL: Portrait and Landscape Presentation shows the result of a DUPLEX NORMAL specification in the portrait presentation. Document D shows the result of the same form definition when a landscape presentation is specified. The printout in landscape presentation is really in a tumble-duplex format, having the tops (of the front side) and the bottoms (of the back side) of the logical pages toward the same edge of the sheet.

Although tumble duplex can be specified in this manner for landscape pages, another parameter, RTUMBLE (rotated tumble), exists to make the form definition look more sensible for use in landscape print jobs. It also produces the results shown in Figure DUPLEX NORMAL: Portrait and Landscape Presentation, depending on whether the form definition called for portrait or landscape presentation. For landscape, the form definition should be written as follows:

FORMDEF ABCD
   PRESENT LANDSCAPE ;
  COPYGROUP ABCD
             DUPLEX RTUMBLE ;
    SUBGROUP BOTH
             COPIES 1 ;

DUPLEX NORMAL: Portrait and Landscape Presentation

The DUPLEX NORMAL and DUPLEX RTUMBLE controls actually produce the same result on the physical page. RTUMBLE is used to maintain an association between duplex specifications and logical page print direction. The same relationship exists between the RNORMAL and the TUMBLE parameters as exists between the NORMAL and the RTUMBLE parameters; that is, within the two sets the terms are interchangeable.

For example, you could write a form definition using DUPLEX TUMBLE as follows:

FORMDEF DEFG ;
  COPYGROUP DEFG
            DUPLEX TUMBLE ;
    SUBGROUP BOTH
             COPIES 1 ;

Documents C and B in Figure Result When Either TUMBLE or RNORMAL Is Specified are the results, depending on how page definition direction is specified to achieve either a portrait page or a landscape page.

Result When Either TUMBLE or RNORMAL Is Specified

To help you remember, use the next table Duplex Specifications.