Split Print Job to Color and B&W?

cheros writes "I work in an office which has various printers, and printing documents with a few color diagrams in is actually a pain. Due to the high cost of the color prints the preference is to use B&W, and print the color pages separately (with obviously an finishing stage to collate and merge the two). Is there a print filter that would automatically split the PostScript print job into a feed for two different queues? (and yes, we use B&W drawings where possible ;-)."

Cool idea, but necessary anymore?

[dschuetz]

To answer the question: I have no idea if such a filter exists, sorry. But it's a cool idea.

On the other hand, don't most "modern" color printers (especially the toner-based ones) print b&w almost as cheaply as regular printers? I seem to recall that some Tek wax printers even came with "free black for life" to encourage use of the printer as the primary output device (you'd short-circuit their moneymaking strategy by making sure that only a few pages in the run contain any color).

The only other thing I can think of is to send the whole document to a B&W printer, then only the color pages to the color printer, but then again, that's probably the way you do it already. :(

If you're working with unix print servers and postscript printers, then I'd think it should be relatively easy to write such a filter. It'd get a bit hairy when you try to do double-sided stuff, as you'd have to track which side you were currently processing and send both sides (where one is color) to the color printer. But it should be reasonable to do, I'd think...

input filter:
- receive pages
- scan page (or pair of pages on a single sheet)
- is color there?
? yes, write this postscript snippet to file A
? no, write the snippet ode to file B
- when done:
- lpr -Pcolor a
- lpr -Pgreyscale b
- lprm self

Or somesuch. Of course, I haven't screwed around with lpd print filters in, oh, 5+ years, so I may be way off base.

My advice: Find a unix geek (preferably a PS-aware perl programmer) and promise them a six-pack of really nice beer if they can solve the problem for you. :) [of course, if you're using a windows print server, you'd better make it a case.]

good luck!