DeskJet 3740 (and probably many others) should print in reverse

PPDs are generated dynamically from foomatic-db since Edgy.
Reassigning to foomatic-db-hpijs.

Till, should this be added to each PPD for face-up printers?

An alternative is setting outputorder=reverse as a default CUPS server option for your printer with this command:
$ lpadmin -p printername -o outputorder-default=reverse

This would need the following:

1. One would need to add a field for the type of default output tray (face-up/down) to the Foomatic printer entry files and this field needs to e populated with the correct information for all printers (usually face-up on inkjets and face-down on lasers). This would be a good and useful improvement for the OpenPrinting database.

2. For reverse output order the pages are reordered by the pstops filter of CUPS. Unfortunately, this operation is only reliable if the PostScript produced by the applications is absolutely DSC-compliant. Especially the most common printable-document-producing application, OpenOffice.org has known problems with its PostScript output. On non-DSC-compliant PostScript pstops easily produces unwished results.

Point (1) could easily be implemented in the OpenPrinting database/Foomatic, but could cause a lot of user complaints and bug reports due to (2). The problem would be easily solved as soon as PostScript is replaced by PDF as standard print job transfer format. In PDF pages can be safely separated from each other to scale and reorder them, without needing to comply with an extra spec. This suggestion was brought into last years Printing Summit in Atlanta by Mike Sweet (author of CUPS) and me and it found wide agreement by the participants of the Summit. As soon as this will be implemented (not in time for Feisty) we will be able to safely add

*DefaultOutputOrder: "reverse"

to the PPD files of appropriate printers,

The PDF printing workflow will be introduced in Intrepid. So there we have the chance to address this problem.

This is the default print setting because it prints faster than reversed. You can change the setting by running hp-toolbox, click print settings and change the output order to reversed.

A

We will not change the default behavior here, as with the current default it is faster, as Aaron says.

Are you serious? It's been nearly 8 years and this crap still hasn't been solved. Have you ever printed 20 pages in multiple sets? I did, with my F370, and then I had to reorder them manually every single time.

This is why the Linux userspace will never take over the desktop--stubborn developers who get in the way of convenience. How is the default behaviour faster? Because it shaves off the few picoseconds it takes the program to reverse an array?