Continuous feed dot matrix printers

[Alan Jackson]

On Mon, 13 Jan 2003 21:46:56 -0800
Bill Campbell <bill at celestial.com> wrote:

> On Mon, Jan 13, 2003 at 09:14:53PM -0600, Alan Jackson wrote:
> >I support some software on CPAN that builds mailing labels in PostScript.
> >
> >I just got a query from a fellow who has a continuous-feed tractor printer
> >(an Okidata) who wants to print labels on it from Linux.
> >
> >I think I gave away my old dot matrix a few years ago so I can't do any
> >testing. I suspect that creating a postscript file is probably not the way
> >to handle a continous feed printer - probably just want to send it raw
> >printing commands and text. Does anyone have experience with continuous
> >feed on Linux? How does it work? What sort of drivers do you need? Am I
> >making this too complicated?
> 
> Yup.
> 
> I don't know about CUPS and the other fancy stuff, but printing
> text under normal *ix is just a matter of a filter that basically
> sends the input directly to the printer without massaging it at
> all.  Typically pages are 66 lines of ascii text, and most of the
> Okidata printers can also set other page lengths so you can use
> the FF (form feed, ctrl-L) character to jump to the top of form.
> 
> Printing labels is just a matter of formatting ascii text into columns with
> the right number of lines in each label.  The default setting on the Oki is
> most like 6lpi (lines per inch).
> 

Thanks! Hopefully we've helped yet another fugitive from Gates world move
to Linux. I tried this on my inkjet, and it worked like a champ. Just sent
the text to /dev/lp0.

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