Print on a continous roll - form for cash register

Classic Servoy
1

Hi all,

just wondered if anyone had tried to print Servoy forms onto a roll of paper – i.e. the page does not have a set length…

2

Hi Christian,

Would it actually matter about length in this case ?

  • If you had a rolling printout of items then wouldn’t you have a list form printing out the item and wouldn’t it flex to the page length that was required ?
    That is, your list form would have only a body set to x pixels high so you would print out line by line !?

  • If you had a standard record view form then it would have a form size defined to handle the printed elements

Am I misunderstanding ?

Cheers
Harry

3

Hi Harry,

The body is not a problem. I suspect I will end up with some amount of white space at the end of my cash-register-receipt, depending on the page-size I choose…

The parts:

Title Header
Body
Trailing Grand Summary
<remainder, until end of whatever page-size I choose>

I’m of course hoping it will ‘just work’, but will let you all know what happens when we hook up the cash-register-printer…

4

Hi Christian:

Way back in the stone ages when I programmed aa bit in dBase III+, we used to run various unusual print jobs.

We found it easier, rather than trying to work around page sizes and similar pre-set constrictions within Word Perfect (the application we sent the data to for merge print runs), instead we learned the printer language and sent explicit instructions (with the data between tags in the printer language) directly to the printer.

Most receipt printers I’ve watched in action seem to accept serial commands that send the data for one row at a time (or several rows at once, in case of the “header” that shows the store name and date, for instance) and then a line-feed. Then the instructions for the next row are sent down. When the entire receipt has been printed, line-by-line, the EndOfPage code is sent.

It seems you could use something like this … sounds like you are working with a true receipt-printer (probably impact or thermal?) that uses continuous non-perforated rolls of paper… I would hope such a printer makes available documentation of the printer language.

Back when I did this, we sent the data & printer codes to the printer using a DOS “print” command via a COM port. (It probably works much like that now.) Then we took the wild boar off the roasting spit and retreated into our caves to share it with the clan. (You can just order from McDonalds now.)

kazar

5

kazar:
It seems you could use something like this … sounds like you are working with a true receipt-printer (probably impact or thermal?) that uses continuous non-perforated rolls of paper… I would hope such a printer makes available documentation of the printer language.

Back when I did this, we sent the data & printer codes to the printer using a DOS “print” command via a COM port. (It probably works much like that now.) Then we took the wild boar off the roasting spit and retreated into our caves to share it with the clan. (You can just order from McDonalds now.)

kazar

Hi Kazar,

finally someone who understands this piece of stone-age kit I have to print on. Apparently it only does ‘Courier’, so I suspect I could send it some commands through a serial port or similar. Thank you for the tip! Will search for documentation.