Operations on pdfs and printing from command line

Problem description

In order to print documents from command line you may use lpr command as follows:

printername=cups-pdf # your printer name
lpr -P $printername temp.pdf

Merging pdf pages into multipage layout

In order to print multiple pages per sheet you need to use external program pdfjam. It is said to be a part of TeXLive distribution (If you don’t have it you can always try: sudo apt install pdfjam). Then you can write:

pdfjam --nup 2x2 aaa.pdf 

I have stumbled upon a problem when trying to do like above. It turned out that in order to have the above command working I need to have pdflscape.sty package in my LaTeX distribution. Usually when working on Linux one have TeXLive with all LaTeX packages installed by default. Since I have MikTeX distribution with packages installed only when required (on-the-fly), in this case I needed to install pdflscape package explicitely.

In newest MikTeX you can do this as follows:

miktex packages install pdflscape

In this way I could finally have pdfjam working.

TODO Printing other files than pdf

You might encounter a problem when trying to print on cups printer non-pdf file, i.e. .doc.

TODO: https://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Using_Your_Own_Filters_to_Print_with_CUPS

1. A workaround

   When printing LibreOffice documents you may find useful LibreOffice converter that enables exporting documents to different formats like this:

   soffice --headless --convert-to pdf  file.odt 
   soffice --headless --convert-to doc  file.odt 
   soffice --headless --convert-to html file.odt 
   

   Then you can process .pdf file with appropriate program/function etc.