CUPS telling the printer to print a set number of pages

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The printer's ability to print multiple collated copies of a document without re-sending the document will depend on the amount of RAM in the printer and the amount of RAM required for the particular print job in question. I.e., you may have enough RAM to store an entire 3 page letter, but not a 200 page book. I believe that's why CUPS always concatenates multiple copies the way it does.

I'd say stick with letting CUPS generate multiple copies the way it does (i.e., resending pages), but hack the filter to put the necessary stapling commands between jobs.

You may want to ask more about this issue in comp.lang.postscript and-or search the archives of that group. It's definitely more of a PostScript question than a Linux question. There's already plenty of good info in the archives of that group about this topic, if you use search terms such as "print collate staple" or similar. The experts there can probably tell you exactly what PostScript code needs to go between collated sets which are transmitted as one big file.

setpagedevice' to re-start stapling for the next set. See, for example StapleDetails is manufacturer specific.)

If you want to insert that stuff between the sets within the one print file, the pstops filter looks fairly straightforward to edit. You should just need to emit the proper setpagedevice commands at the start of the 'for' loop that does the actual copying (around line 861 in pstops.c, in the function copydsc).

Last month I considered hacking pstops in a similar manner for my own use, but never got around to it. So bear in mind that my comments here are based on only a few hours of my own research, not some vast expertise nor hands-on experience with trying it out.

You might also be able to wrap the PostScript file in PJL code to do the stapling you want. I don't know much about PJL, but Ricoh does have docs for it on their support website. It looks like CUPS will pbutt the PJL to the printer....