Good Day,

Did i say i hate printing problems lately??! Seems always spending more time on printers than most all else :rolleyes:

Ok here is this weeks dilemma - label printers.

I can get some to work, and don't know why some do and dont. In this case, the printer is a "Smart Label 440". The rest were "Dymo" which i think is more standard.

In this case whenever i print to the label, the text is tiny tiny tiny. Just as if ashell is trying to adjust the output to the form size, which in this case is 1.5" x 3" - and treating as a entire page. If I set this printer as default, i get the same result in APEX preview, which is a good indicator that the drivers are running the asylum here.

Any ideas on how to output the text as normal 10cpi? I am not using Passthru, but i am not setting any //GDI commands either. I haven't taken it that far yet since the Dymo's seemed to work without further programming.

Thanks.

The symptom does indeed sound like A-Shell is doing the auto-pitch logic, not necessarily assuming 8.5 by 11 paper but assuming 80 columns, and maybe 60 lines. To debug I would suggest activating the LP and perhaps XDEBUG traces and then printing a sample file, preferably under local Windows. The traces should contain the printer init file lines plus something indicating the font calculation.

If using GDI printing, it's probably wise to either specify a PITCH setting in the init file, or an explicit //SETFONT in the document, so that you aren't relying on assumptions about the driver default behavior.

Will do, thanks Cap.

This was a windows server but is also re-created inhouse with our linux server. So at least it's consistent.

Not using //GDI commands at this point. Would you suggest any changes to the printer.ini file?

It's hard to suggest changes without knowing what's in there to start with. But given that the problem is the font size, I would consider using the PITCH = AUTO feature but tailoring it to the number of characters you want to print on the label by using the appropriate CPP and LPP commands. For example, if you want to print 5 lines by 40 characters, then:

CPP = 40
LPP = 5
PITCH = AUTO

Alternatively, you could use the PREFIX feature to prepend a header containing //SETFONT and maybe //SETVMI commands to force the character size and spacing that you want.

I'm still confused how this ever worked on any label printer without some kind of specific configuration like I'm suggesting here. Just relying on system or driver defaults for such non-standard situations seems like a recipe for pain and suffering.

In the words of Yoda... i see pain... suffering...

Agreed, however, up to now there was no reason to "question" the working model.

Thanks for the suggestions will report back.

That sounds reasonable on the surface.

But the more I think about it, the more it seems that failure to question the working model (or better put: failure to understand how or why it works), is one of the biggest sources of tech support problems.

Obviously we all have limited time and are lured into using more technology than anyone could possibly understand, but the world would be a better place if more people paused to try to understand the "why" before resorting to the "it always worked before" argument. (Or so says my bank when I ask them why the ATM won't give me any more money, when it always worked before.)

No Joy setting the CPP/LPP/Pitch settings in the printer.ini file. Not sure why... but now i realized i forgot to turn on the appropriate traces... ugh. Will try again. If not, i will then try the prefix option

Let me see the traces when you get them.