Printing barcodes with non-IPDS impact printers

[hcedmondson]

I have an application that prints a barcoded form on an IBM twinax-attached, IPDS, impact printer.

I now have to print the same form at a remote site where twinax is not possible since all they have is an Internet connection to the i. I've been told a LAN-capable IPDS printer is not an inexpensive option.

I've been looking at Oki, Lexmark and other basic dot-matrix printers and they all can print barcodes, they can be purchased with either an internal or external print server.

Now I'm wondering how to get these barcodes to print. It's a 6-digit number using Interleaved 2 of 5 symbology.

I can find the escape sequences required by these printers to change to a barcode font, what I'm not sure of is how to get the i to translate a DDS barcode command into the proper escape sequence.

Any ideas very much appreciated.

[jtaylor]

Are they AFP-capable? We print barcodes to non-IPDS HP laser printer as AFPDS spooled files.

[hcedmondson]

I don't think these printers have any notion about AFP, they are sort of old school.

[Scott Klement]

Use host print transform?

that's what we do. Our lasers are configed as HPT printers to the 400. The barcode DDS keyword works automatically without any further work on our part. (No need to configure hex codes et al.)

[hcedmondson]

I tried Host Print Transform, the barcode did not print. The HPT for *LEX2391 appears to handle text only.

I'm going to see what *USERASCII is all about.

[Scott Klement]

*USERASCII means that you send the data to the spooled file already in the printer's language. To use it, you'd have to hard-code all of the printer escape codes, font information, etc, etc, into your program and code it all in ASCII.

[hcedmondson]

Thanks Scott. I found the programmer's reference guide for the printer online which provides examples of how to, and how not to, send barcodes to the printer.

I've got a PC-based LPD daemon program that I can send spool files from a remote output queue to. It places the received data in "spool" files on the PC, then the writer component delivers it to the physical printer. The i remote output queue will use the HPT for this printer.

By not starting the writer I can grab those "spool" files and with any luck, using a hex viewer, reverse engineer the base commands sent by the i. Then I'd only have to figure out the barcode command piece of the puzzle.

My other thought is modify the WSCST for this printer and redefine some of the supported features I don't need, like BOLD say, and have it send the barcode command in it's place.