The main thing to report is that the printing module has made significant progress.
It is almost finished.
Some loose ends left to tie up.
The printing module is a common way to print stuff from the web application on the server side (not in the browser).
You can define a layout JSON format and the printing module will translate that into different formats:
- regular coordinate based canvas formats (the top left corner of the paper is 0,0), like PDFs.
These can be downloaded/opened by the browser, or send directly to the printer via CUPS (Common Unix Printing System). - ESC/POS with a line based grid for Epson ticket printers.
Instead of coordinates, there are text lines.
The ESC/POS adapter handles the translation from mm to lines.
There is support for Windows, CUPS, and LAN. - ZPL (Zebra Programming Language) to talk to Zebra label printers via CUPS and LAN.
Some improvements since last month
- The coordinate system of the printing system is now in millimeters.
This make it easier for reference for future drivers. - Better error handling for invalid values in the JSON template
- ESC/POS adapter is fully implemented
- ZPL adapter is fully implemented
It was a lot of work, but we haven’t come across a sleek solution like this anywhere on the internet.
This should make printing in web applications in general so much better and easier.
Which was always a weak point for websites used as applications.