I do the occasional long distance hike and often require printing 10+ A3 maps.

I’m trying to find an algorithmic solution to the manual process of printing off multiple maps of a route.

The manual process is often non-optimal, in which I mean pages should be kept to a minimum. Eg. Extra pages are added, where as if I had moved previous pages over slightly here and there it would have encompassed the route in fewer pages.

To complicate things printing can be done in both portrait and landscape modes.

Id really appreciate a push in the right direction. Is there a simple solution or does it require some more elaborate thinking?

To clarify: Given a list of 2d points, find the minimum amount of boxes they will fit in. With the boxes being either wh (portrait) or hw (landscape)