Every time I work on Printer Language, I start doubt my life 🤔

Printing is hard.

@bkwilliams there’s a language called zebra printer language ZPL, and what it actually prints isn’t the same from emulator 🤦‍♂️

been there done that.. gotta love labelary tho'

To be fair, almostbevery programming language is a printer language. It's what they've been made for :)

Reminds me when I had to print bar codes on small stickers .. it was a nightmare at work with me testing prints every couple minutes.

@sunfishcc I used to work with those ended up setting up templates in excel... Worked more reliably

Epson XML isn't any better.

Depending on the target printer version, some features might work, not work, or cause the printer to crash. Yay! ugh.

Zebra is life! What program are you using to make the labels?

@xewl wow. My boss asked me it that app open source? But hell no!

@Root we update framework multiple times during the day. The printer survived. But I’m not

Latest update. We updated to latest firmware. The ZPL completely screw up, can’t recognise any ^A0 scalable font at all. But boss realised the printer added support on DPL, any we got the same label for DPL, which works just fine. So my 2 days hard work is completely wasted. Yeah! 🤦‍♂️

@sunfishcc I only use labelary for showing previews, or testing output. Sadly haven't encountered any zpl2jpg or anything in the wild yet.

@xewl I usually write basic command and test on labelary, and then test on real printer. We got 3 different models (zebra, datamax, Honeywell) both run ZPL, but the ^FB is end up in different positions, such a mess 🤦‍♂️

@sunfishcc All our label-printers are luckily all Zebra GK420d so, any discrepancies are futile, as long as it works for that one :p

@xewl 👍Honeywell offers similar printer with half the price. We rent zebra printers before, and put these printers in fruit packhorse, so they won’t last very long anyway. My boss is trying some alternatives...

TSC, Picca, Intermec (bought by Honeywell) ... I ship all of those 😏

@MPKaboose Honeywell was on the news for China vs US trade war. I wonder if it will impact the price?!

@sunfishcc I'd rather go for one type of printer we already know it just works with our setups here, price ain't a problem in this regard.. also, we buy from ByPos here, just because it's an ongoing business relationship :)

@sunfishcc I honestly don't know, we mostly deal with Zebra and CAB