Printing Barcodes From Roadrunner

Many Printers claim to be able to print barcodes, however printing one, and printing one that will read back are two different problems.

For the purposes of these notes I will present a solution that in known to work with Roadrunner, and without a lot of custom programming. Roadrunner generaly writes to printers using a subset of the IBM proprinter escape sequences.

The Kyocera FS- series printers, are heavy duty laser printers. They are mostly rated at 300,000 pages over a 4 year working life. The can print a full 8 inch wide printable area. They support an IBM Proprinter mode. They have a text based programming language Prescribe that can be used with the Roadrunner Report layout forms.

If a user realy wants to print barcodes to something else, you will probabaly need to write a custom program.

Report Layouts using Prescribe

Example Layout codes are taken from a Warehouse print, that printed 6 Lables with Barcodes on an A4 sheet.

Note As we are programming the printer in page mode, data does not have to be sent in line order.

Initalize Printer in to prescribe mode

Layout Code L01:HDR0
!R! RES; CASS 2; SPO L;FTMD 13; FSET 0P12H600V6B; unit c; STM 1;
#x04teRm#

!R! RES

Enter Prescribe mode, and reset printer state.

CASS 2

Paper Cassette 2

SPO L

Print in Landscape

FTMD 13

Character Spacing Line Spacing and Orientation to follow Font.

FSET 0P12H600V6B

  • Fixed Pitch Font
  • 12 CPI
  • 600 points per line
  • Extra Black

unit c

We wish to use Centimeters for our units

STM 1

Top Margine 1 unit

Layout for Label 4

Layout Code L01:DET4
MAP 15, 0; FSET 0P12H600V6B;
MAP 15, 0; TEXT 'Cus : #C02 Cust Name             #';
MAP 15, 0.5; TEXT 'Rotation Date: #G11 s2-rf   #';
MAP 15, 3.5; TEXT 'Batch No:  #G11 s1-rf   #';
MAP 15, 4.0; TEXT 'Cases per layer: #G21# x #G22#';
MAP 23, 0; TEXT 'Recipt Date: #G02Dat#';
MAP 23, 0.5; TEXT 'Pal:#J15Pal#   Qty:#J14Cas#';
MAP 22, 3.5; TEXT 'Gds Ref: #G10 G-ref    #';
MAP 22, 4.0; TEXT '#G15 Descrp            #';
MAP 17, 1.0; BARC 23, Y, '1234567890';
#X04teRm#

MAP 15, 0

Move Absolute Position to 15 units across page and 0 units down.

FSET 0P12H600V6B

  • Fixed Pitch Font
  • 12 CPI
  • 600 points per line
  • Extra Black

TEXT 'Cus : '

Print the Quoted string following the TEXT

FSET 0P12H900V4B

  • Fixed Pitch Font
  • 12 CPI
  • 900 points per line
  • Extra Bold

End Page

Layout Code L01:EOP
!R! RES; FRPO INIT;
FRPO P1, 5; ERPO P3, 2; ERPO U6, 3; ERPO U7, 0; page; exit;
#X04teRm#

A Lot of this makes no sence at all

!R! RES

Enter Prescribe But we are in prescribe

Break page and Reset to User programmed/factory defaults. Braketted valuse are programmable memmory location codes.

  • Emulation mode to {P1}
  • Units to inch
  • Paper source to {R4}
  • Output tray to {R0}
  • Paper size to {R2}
  • Top margin to 0.5 inch or {A1/A2} depending on emulation.
  • Left margin to 0 inch or {A3/A4} depending on emulation.
  • Right margin to Max or {A5/A6} depending on emulation.
  • Bottom margin to 0.5 inch or {A7/A8} depending on emulation.
  • Line spacing {U0/1}
  • See Chapter 2 page 236 of the Prescribe manual for the full set.

FRPO INIT

Reset All Programable options, includeing setings for the current interface to factory defaults. After sending exit and power cycle the printer.

But we are in the middle of a print

FRPO P1, 5

Set Power on or reset Emulation mode to Epson LQ

ERPO P3, 2;

No such command

ERPO U6, 3;

No such command

ERPO U7, 0;

No such command

page;

Page brake.

exit;

Exit Prescribe programming mode.

Example

The Test file should produce a print like this.