🚀 go-pugleaf

True, PostScript knows about scaling and placement of text, if you wish 
2up or 16up, it's up to you to organize. 
PostScript printers come with a PPD (PostScript Printer Description) 
file **) that details their specialities. 
Some vendors include 2up etc routines there (e.g. for HP4500) that you may 
study. 
Since this is not a speciality, other vendors may not include such code 
for you. 

As for BeginPage - EndPage: I gave up. Once I wrote a routine based on these 
beasts and it worked fine with my printer, but not my Level-2 viewers that 
I wanted to use to to preview my files before sending them to the printer. 

Adobe's DPS executes the showpage operator once, then promptly redefines it, 
with no reference to BeginPage. 
Ghostview has showpage intact as operator, it only screws-up things by passing 
0 as page number to BeginPage all the time. 
You can fix this by doing your own counting, but the basic problem is that 
there is no way to make the thing wait for "enter" to proceed to the next 
batch of pages. 

I wanted the progam to read a character from keyboard for yes, but a DPS can 
write to the screen but can not read from the keyboard. 
It drives me crazy when some PS experts tell me that "you know, printers do not 
have keyboards", when my computer has and a DPS should be able to do such an 
elementary thing. 

So what can you do? If you can program in a compiled language, it is easy to 
write a program that converts a text file to 2up-16up PS program with colours 
etc if you wish. I wrote one in fortran when the first PS printer has 
made its appearance (now you know my age), of course without any supporting 
software. 

To convert 1up PS space-waster programs (e.g. saves from Acroread or Netscape) is more difficult. Long-long ago I wrote another fortran program to look for 
%% conventions, skip unwanted pages and impose new scales on and draw borders 
around the remaining ones. It was a short program but not a simple job. 

Your problem is everyone's problem and I think that is would be quite 
appropriate if Adobe addressed this issue, instead of letting everyone 
fabricate his/her own little solution at a cost of lots of time wasted. 

Miklos Somogyi 

* *) from certain vendors they only "come" if you ask them through a consumer protection agency...