Where do I ask for a new printer utility?

[Asheville Joe]

Hi.  I could really use a utility that does essentially what xpp does, 
but is callable from a script such as bash.  As far as I know, one does 
not exist and after taking a look at the 26 pages of code behind xpp, I 
was quickly convinced that I wasn't going to write it myself!

Is there somewhere appropriate where I could post a request for what I want?

All I actually want to do is emulate double sided printing on my printer 
the way Windoze does.  I can do it now manually with xpp, but it's very 
cumbersome and error prone.  It seems to me that a duplex printing 
emulator is something a large number of users would appreciate having.  
It is definitely a desktop application as opposed to a server 
application, but Linux on the desktop is an objective for many in the 
open software community.

As far as I can tell, all it requires (aside from the normal hassle of 
parsing command line parameters and error checking) is a bunch of calls 
to CUPS.  That's a bit more than I can figure out at this point, but for 
someone who knows what they're doing, it's conceptually simple.

In fact, if I could just fake console input to xpp, it would be ugly, 
but it would work as long as I could wait for the first xpp to finish 
(and for me to flip the paper around) before running the second xpp to 
print the other sides.  Then, the only outstanding issue would be 
figuring out if there was an odd number of total pages so I could print 
a blank page at the end to eject the last sheet.

Arer there any keyboard/mouse "macro" automation tools that could do 
this?  I know they have existed as far back as CP/M and MSDOS and have 
even seen (but not used) some for Windoze.  Software testers like these 
things so thay can do the same sequence of events over and over until 
they get it right.

I put a message on linuxprinting.org and got several helpful responses 
from Till Kamppeter (the author of xpp), but no help with emulating.

Any ideas?

Thanks.


Joe