N-up (Multiple page in a sheet) layout supports in Postscript

Question

I would like to develop an application which is similar to FinePrint. It provides sophisticated features for the user to configure the printing setting and able to view before confirm printing.

The solution I can think of is to use Redmon to redirect postscript to my application and the user will be able to configure the printing setting such as n-up (Multiple page in a sheet) and preview before printing. My question is, if it possible to edit the postscript layout to support multiple page in a sheet?

Any other suggestions are welcome. If someone could explain how FinePrint works will be great.

Answer 1

Postscript is a language, where a document begins with page definition like "letter", which defines defines a setpagedevice and initgraphics... which initializes a new page and ends with a "showpage" which sends the raster image to the printer. To produce an n-up page, the beginning and ending commands need to be redefined to not initialize a new page and not output the page, but instead define a series of commands which will scale and position the individual pages into a super page.

If all of the pages come from the same source, it isn't too hard, but if the ages come from a variety of sources and goes to a variety of output devices it can get difficult quickly. If you want to mix pages from multiple sources on the same page can be extremely difficult.

A term you can search on google is "imposition".