Sandeep R
Enterprise Architecture, Technology and Solutions Consulting at Infosys Technologies Ltd.
Survey on thermal print, labeling
1. Has anybody tried UPOS/JPOS or UPOS/OPOS for thermal printing
2. We believe adopting UPOS standard provides for printer device independence, meaning we need not change the software if we switch the printer from an old vendor to a new one. Your opinions, is UPOS supported by all printer OEMs, such as Datamax, intermec, monarch, markpoint etc.
3. How performant is UPOS/JPOS versus escape sequence scripting for thermal printing. Is it better or worse any benchmarks are welcome.
4. Anyone tried JMX based control of thermal printers, alternately JNI. Are these better than escape sequence scripting or internally they use escape sequence scripting.
5. Can standard payloads made of PDF, postscript, images or XML be printed on thermal printers. Or you feel thermal printers need only escape sequence scripting.
6. What is your feel about printing 2D Barcodes using UPOS or JMX or JNI, is it possible.
7. Are there any XML standards for POS printing that are recommended
8. Switching from escape sequence scripting to UPOS, what all steps might be involved. Do we need to change the printer device driver, etc.
9. Bartender by seagull scientific is one example of label design software. Are there others, how do they compare.
10. Can templates for label printing be provisioned as a service, given the diverse printer landscape so many OEMs. Your opinions.
Answers (5)
Bob B
President, RVB Systems Group - Barcode / RFID Systems - Custom software development
Best Answers in: Inventory Management (1)
Well, I can answer #9 & 10. Yes there are others. RVB Systems Group sells Bartender because we are comfortable developing custom applications wrapped around this software. Seagull provides free technical support for Bartender.
And yes, label templates can certainly be provided as a service. We help many of our customers design complex label templates.
If you need help
Links:
I can answer #5. I worked at a distributor and used Foxpro to create EDI ASN and 'ticket' type labels and print them to both Datamax and Wasp printers hooked up to stand alone print servers. I could be wrong, but with that config, we should be talking PostScript. Your PDF, Images, XML should be converted to PostScript when they're sent to the printer. The main difference is the page size.
Regarding #6 - for me, barcodes were just a font.
Using the printer(s) as a standard Windows printer device, allowed me to switch between DataMax and Wasp. Basically, we had multiple printers with different label sizes preloaded, and just printed to the printer with the correct label size for what we needed.
Beth L suggests this expert on this topic:
Tom N
Sr. Account Manager @ PSI Engineering
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Hi Sandeep,
Try contacting "cab Technologies" as they have open source TTP systems. I understand that Zebra is now able to print PDF but I have not seen it. PCL and Post Script are not able to be printed on TTP's, that I know of anyway.
Cheers,
Tom Napier
www.PSIengineering.com
(developers of document and fulfillment automation systems for SCM/N)
Links:
Steve T
Principal Consultant at Triact
Best Answers in: Customer Service (1), Planning (1), Inventory Management (1), Manufacturing (1), Project Management (1), Personal Taxes (1), Personal Investing (1), Professional Networking (1), Starting Up (1), Software Development (1)
Codesoft and LabelView from Teklynx share a common printing run-time - just different GUI's, and both support all thermal/thermal-transfer printers, many through the native printer drivers as well as the windows drivers.
The same label template can be rendered for any printer. The Sentinel product from Teklynx is a server-based enterprise printing solution. We've had a good experience with it in most cases, although we've also delivered our own enterprise print solution using the standard Codesoft runtime. In either case, the benefit is the ability to deploy label templates and manage printing from a server.
And, yes to #10 - these enterprise solutions run as windows services.
Teklynx has an enterprise printing solution that
