[barcode] preview of barcode 0.97

[Andrea Scopece]

From: "Boszormenyi Zoltan" <zboszor@mail.externet.hu>
To: "Alessandro Rubini" <rubini@gnu.org>
Cc: <barcode@lists.linux.it>
Sent: Thursday, October 18, 2001 12:01 PM
Subject: Re: [barcode] preview of barcode 0.97


> Hi!
>
> Alessandro Rubini wrote:
>
> >
> > - patch by Andrea Scopece  <a.scopece@vizzavi.it> for PCL output
> >
> Finally I was able to put my hand on a "HP compatible" printer.
> It is an Olivetti JP 192. As I remember from its handbook, it speeks the
> PCL3
> language. I set it up from the RedHat 6.2 control-panel/printtool as a
> - HP LaserJet
> - HP LaserJet III* with Delta Row Compression
> - HP LaserJet III with duplex capability,
> and it prints texts, graphics, everything correctly through ghostscript.
> Only the HP LaserJet IId/IIp/III* with TIFF compression did not work.
>
> But neither with BARCODE_OUT_PCL nor with BARCODE_OUT_PCL_III
> I get the bars, only the numbers. I used
>
> barcode -P -b "1234567890128" -o x.pcl
> cat x.pcl >/dev/lp0    (this is for bypassing ghostscript)
>
> and replacing
>     flags |= BARCODE_OUT_PCL;
> with
>     flags |= BARCODE_OUT_PCL_III;
> in main.c of barcode after recompile, I did the same.
>
> In both cases I got only the numbers.
>
> Maybe the PCL writer forgot setting the initial point of the line?
> A postscript interpreter would warn this case and not draw the line...
> Anyway, I am just guessing, I am not familiar with hand-writing PCL.
> And for me, it is not a big problem, I use barcode for producing EPS
output.
>
> Best regards,
> Zoltán Böszörményi
>
I' sorry, these days I'm away from my house, so I don't have
available printers to test.

Howewer I checked source from barcode 0.97 and my patch that
was written for 0.96 and they seems identical.
I have an older Epson 7100 that emulate Lasejet II and has worked fine,
with my patch applied to barcode 0.96.

However, PCL (5) offers many functions for graphics printings,,
what I have used for barcode are so called "Rectangular area fill",
because I checked they was largely available on "Hp family laser printers",
from Laserjet II to nowdays printers.

AFAIR, ghostscript translate EPS to PCL using a sort of raw binary
rappresentation of every dot, that is a slower task and generate large
amount of data to send to ther printer, but probably is still more largely
available.

Well, I think (but I'm not sure), your printer emulation don't support
"rectangular area fill" functions.

I will check barcode 0.97 as fast as possible, if there aren't bugs,
may be I will write a new option (BARCODE_OUT_PCL_DOT), ...

Anyway, thanks for your reports

Andrea Scopece