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On 1 Apr 2009, at 04:25, Joseph wrote: |
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> On 03/31/09 19:40, Grant wrote: |
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>> I have a Brother QL-570 label printer printing on 29x90mm labels. My |
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>> goal is to have 6 characters printed across the center of the label. |
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>> It prints like this: |
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>> |
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>> $ echo 123456 | lpr |
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>> |
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>> but the text is in the upper corner of the label, it has the wrong |
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>> orientation, and the font is too small. |
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>> |
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>> It also prints like this: |
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>> |
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>> $ lpr test.png |
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>> |
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>> but the text doesn't come out very crisp, and I'd rather not create a |
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>> file with imagemagick for each label to print. Is there another way |
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>> to print large, properly oriented text on the fly? |
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|
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With some printers it's possible to add control codes to the text |
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you're printing to do stuff like this. |
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|
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EG: |
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http://www.sturec.com/help/printing/printers.htm |
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http://printers.necsam.com/public/printers/pclcodes/pcl5hp.htm |
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|
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But it depends whether your printer driver supports them, and I very |
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much doubt any of the above will work for you. In some printers that |
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sort of stuff is implemented in hardware (firmware), but yours appears |
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to be a winprinter. I would look at the .ppd files first, to try & see |
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if the author has implemented anything like this. |
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I really understand where you're coming from not wanting to mess with |
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imagemagick, but at the end of the day *something* has to raster the |
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ASCII into little pixels, so it's not really that dirty & shameful if |
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you have to write a little wrapper script to do so. On my trusty olde |
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HP LaserJet 4000 it may be the onboard hardware PostScript™ which |
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converts the text into character shapes, but your little printer |
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doesn't have so much processing power, so the computer has to do the |
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rendering for it. |
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|
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Thus a wrapper script that calls imagemagick and converts $1 into an |
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image file may merely be considered a "userspace driver". If you make |
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the image larger, is this reflected on the printer's output, or does |
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it perhaps get sharper? Is it possible to change the DPI of |
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imagemagick's output? If you run lpr on images of other formats, do |
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they print? You may find a different file format might be sharper, or |
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you might find that postscript files work (handled by CUP's built-in |
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software renderer) and that you can use Ghostscript or something to |
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manipulate the output. |
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|
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I assume you've read all of this guy's pages: |
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http://etc.nkadesign.com/Printers/QL550LabelPrinterPerl |
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http://etc.nkadesign.com/Printers/QL550LabelPrinter |
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|
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> It is not very well supported under Linux: |
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> http://openprinting.org/show_printer.cgi?recnum=Brother-QL-570 |
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Have you found these pages useful in the past? My experience is that |
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hardly anyone ever bothers to update such pages. :( |
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I'm not saying it's exactly a wonderprinter, famed in fable & song, |
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but the only thing I find helpful on there is the link to a page which |
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links to the etc.nkadesign.com pages. From the looks of those one |
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should be able be able to do something fairly useful with this |
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printer, depending upon one's mad skillz. |
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|
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Stroller. |
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