Here's a sneak peek at an implementation of the above: wvoigt/dominiontabs/RefactoredDraw
I am interested in comments. It is a big change. So I don't want to go too much further unless it is felt I am somewhat on a good path.

There were several objectives for these changes:

Allow dividers to be placed anywhere on a page, in any ordinal rotation. This includes flipping individual dividers from the front of the page to the back of the page.
Improve the layout efficiency of the dividers on the page. The added improvements include:
(a) checking to see if rotating the dividers allows more to be printed on a page, and (b) checking to see if there is enough room to add one extra set of cards in another rotation.

Other improvements include:

Having an object for each divider that contains all the printing information pertaining to that divider. This includes the card information, it’s x,y, rotation, tab side, what text to display on the front/back, if it is on one of the outer edges of the page (and hence might need crop marks), the line type of the outline, etc.
Crop marks integrated into the card outline. They move/rotate with the card. A translation helper is provided that takes the rotation of the divider along with the page edge information to determine when crop marks are included. When an extra rotated row of cards can be printed on a page, that extra set of cards will have their own set of crop marks.
A more self contained plotting routine. This make the calculations for all the card outline and crop marks much easier. Basically lines are drawn from current point to next point. The plotting routine keeps up with where everything is on the canvas. Without this, the calculations for the outlines, with the many variations, becomes very complicated. It also includes a helper for drawing the crop marks.
A new option to have dots printed at each vertices of the divider. This is a compromise between a full line outline and using crop marks. It is also possible to have dots and crop marks. Often, when cutting out dividers, at least one set of crop marks must be cut off, or inner corners are not easily distinguished. By having the dots, it is easy to see exactly where to stop the cut.
Implements request from Issue Option to print alternating tabs in same orientation. #70

What has not been done:

While the ground work has been put in place, the layout optimizer does not yet try to save space by interleaving the tabs (when the tab width is less than ½ the divider width.) But the infrastructure is there to rotate, move, and flip dividers as needed.
The layout optimizer does nothing special for wrapper/slip covers. Because the height of the dividers vary, to fully optimize the wrappers/slip covers, the optimization layout needs to be done on a page by page basis. Currently it assumes the height is the tallest divider (Copper).
Automatic Continuous Integration tests need to be updated.

Original
--outfile test-demo-letter-vertical-original.pdf --orientation vertical --papersize LETTER --tab_name_align edge --linetype line --tab_side left-alternate
test-demo-letter-vertical-original.pdf

Optimized with Dots, using front/back flipping to alternate tab side
--outfile test-demo-letter-vertical-optimized.pdf --orientation vertical --papersize LETTER --tab_name_align edge --linetype dot --optimize --tab_side left-alternate-text
test-demo-letter-vertical-optimized.pdf
Note the extra divider at the top. Also left/right alternation was done by flipping the divider front to back.

Same as Optimized above, but with slightly smaller margins
--outfile test-demo-letter-vertical-optimized2.pdf --orientation vertical --papersize LETTER --tab_name_align edge --linetype dot --optimize --tab_side left-alternate-text --minmargin 0.7x0.7
test-demo-letter-vertical-optimized2.pdf
Note the dividers are rotated, and thus more fit on the page. Also left/right alternation was done by flipping the divider front to back.

I've also noticed that in some cases, more dividers can fit on a page if the following is used:
--minmargin 0.7x0.7
which corresponds to the minimum 0.25 inch margin many printers recommend.

Make more cards fit on a single page. #6

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