[ic] Linux label printers

[Jon]

> On Tue, 18 Jan 2005 doug1 at ultimatepassage.com wrote:
>
> > Here is a sample output to print a complete UPS Next Day air label.  The
> > lower case "b" and the characters that follow generate the 2D barcode.
> > The lines that start with an uppercase "B" generate a conventional
> > barcode.
> >
> >
> > M135,2,100^M
> > I8,0,001^M
>
> [snip]
>
> > A30,1066,0,3,1,1,N," P.O. NUMBER 3343844-1"^M
> > A598,1179,0,2,1,1,N,"URC 08/2001"^M
>
> The ASCII code Bruce posted is called EPL (or it may be ZPL, there are many
> "PL"s Printer Languages many of which are printer-vendor-specific).
>
> Most shipping vendors (like FedEx) can provide this in place of a TIFF or PNG
> raster image.  This is what I was referring to in the last post.
>
> - Brian
>

Here are the first few lines of what FedEx sends me in what I had assumed was
a PNG format

N
OD
q812
Q1218,24
D15
ZB
LO385,-2,3,175
A630,608,0,4,2,2,N,"FedEx"
LO10,163,790,3
LO10,708,790,3
A25,-12,0,2,1,1,N,"FROM:"

In any case it is basically what Bruce had shown minus the ^M
which I simply write to the file /dev/ttS0

Grant ...  I tried using the parallel port but didn't have any luck so
used the serial which works fine for me.

I did not try going through the browser to, for example, download the file
and write to printer using Perl or some other language.  Didn't
know about FireFox at the time of development.  Then again you
still need the printer and the browser on the same physical right ?
Or am I not thinking of something.


Jon