Android Question How to print text in graphic mode?

[vecino]

Hi, a customer has some portable bluetooth printers that only print English and Chinese characters.

I need to print these characters:

á é í ó ú Á É Í Ó Ú ñ Ñ ç Ç €

The printers are ESC/POS compatible, but the characters are "cut out" in all the codepages and there are no characters from other languages.

I made a question to the manufacturer and he has indicated that I must use the graphic mode to get these characters to print.
Can anyone explain to me how to do this?
Thank you very much.

 

[vecino]

or maybe just

Dim Label1 As B4XView
Dim bmp As B4XBitmap = Label1.Snapshot

Note: I never tested with Label as B4XView.

That's how it works
Although now I will have to adapt my software to print images when using this type of printer.

 

[aeric]

That's how it works
Although now I will have to adapt my software to print images when using this type of printer.

View attachment 143838

Does it print slow?

 

[vecino]

No, it is not slow, it is not as fast as in text mode, but it is acceptable.
The bad thing is that I need several fonts for titles, totals, etc. and with a "Label" I can't change the fonts.

As for printing to PDF, the problem is that I have not yet been able to print anything because it does not give me to choose the bluetooth printer, it asks me for an IP.

 

[TILogistic]

Here in my country many Chinese printers are used to print tickets (PDF)
example:

 

[aeric]

Here in my country many Chinese printers are used to print tickets (PDF)
example:

Can you point me to some examples on how to print pdf with thermal printer in B4A?

 

[aeric]

with a "Label" I can't change the fonts.

You can use custom fonts in B4A.

does not give me to choose the bluetooth printer, it asks me for an IP.

Which library you are using?

 

[vecino]

Here in my country many Chinese printers are used to print tickets (PDF)
example:

This is also the case here.
The problem is that this particular brand/model does not have the accented letters or the "ñÑ".

 

[vecino]

You can use custom fonts in B4A.

Which library you are using?

After generating a "PDF" I try to print it, a program on the tablet opens and asks me for the IP. In other words, it is independent of my program.
It's just a test to print a pdf.

¿Custom fonts?, on a label?

 

[vecino]

Another option is to define characters that I don't need to print what I need, basically only: € ñ Ñ
The accented letters I can omit them, for the moment.
But does anyone have a link on how to define characters?

ESC & 0 n1 n2d0d1d2 data

Allows the user to define their own characters.
N1= Number of the first character
n2= Number of the last character
d0= Space to the left of the character
d1= Width of the character
d2= Space to the right of the character
data = 3 bytes needed for each character
character; superscript/subscript need only
2 bytes per character

 

[TILogistic]

Can you point me to some examples on how to print pdf with thermal printer in B4A?

https://developer.android.com/reference/android/graphics/pdf/PdfRenderer

Search.

print pdf bluetooth android - Google Search

note:
I posted the examples above because the PDF has the advantage of sharing or printing.

 

[aeric]

https://developer.android.com/reference/android/graphics/pdf/PdfRenderer

Search.

print pdf bluetooth android - Google Search

note:
I posted the examples above because the PDF has the advantage of sharing or printing.

I am looking for B4A snippets or examples, which works on bt thermal printer.

 

[TILogistic]

I am looking for B4A snippets or examples, which works on bt thermal printer.

And this class is not going to serve you or is it a special case?

Bluetooth ESC/POS Printer Class

For the last couple of weeks I have been playing with an 80mm Bluetooth ESC/POS thermal printer I bought off eBay, new and delivered, for the ludicrously cheap price of £20. While the print quality, particularly of images with large areas of black (they are gray due to power supply or thermal...

www.b4x.com

[B4X] [B4Xpages] PDF to Image (B4XBitmap)

I often needed to turn a PDF into an image, most of the time to have it printed on a thermal printer. I was looking for simple and cross-platform methods. This is an example that allows you to get an image with Windows / Android / iOs from a PDF file NB. For Windows it is necessary to...

www.b4x.com

in the forum there are solutions that you can look for.

 

[aeric]

And this class is not going to serve you or is it a special case?

Bluetooth ESC/POS Printer Class

For the last couple of weeks I have been playing with an 80mm Bluetooth ESC/POS thermal printer I bought off eBay, new and delivered, for the ludicrously cheap price of £20. While the print quality, particularly of images with large areas of black (they are gray due to power supply or thermal...

www.b4x.com

[B4X] [B4Xpages] PDF to Image (B4XBitmap)

I often needed to turn a PDF into an image, most of the time to have it printed on a thermal printer. I was looking for simple and cross-platform methods. This is an example that allows you to get an image with Windows / Android / iOs from a PDF file NB. For Windows it is necessary to...

www.b4x.com

in the forum there are solutions that you can look for.

Thanks. I thought there is a way to print the PDF straight away. It's okay. This is a solution.

 

[emexes]

These are the characters available in text mode:

What happens if you print this test again, after printing/sending possible control code to select Windows 1252 character set eg something like:

Dim TestString As String
For I = 33 to 255
    TestString = TestString & Chr(I)
Next
TestString = TestString & Chr(13) & Chr(10)

Dim Windows1252 As String = Chr(27) & Chr(116) & Chr(14)

SendToPrinter(TestString)
SendToPrinter(Windows1252)
SendToPrinter(TestString)

 

[emexes]

What happens if you print this test again, after printing/sending possible control code to select Windows 1252 character set eg something like:

Actually it would be even better to do the test string in lines of 32 characters, eg:

Dim TestString As String
For FirstCharOnLine = 32 To 255 Step 32
    For I = FirstCharOnLine To FirstCharOnLine + 31
        TestString = TestString & Chr(I)
    Next
    TestString = TestString & Chr(13) & Chr(10)
Next

 

[vecino]

What happens if you print this test again, after printing/sending possible control code to select Windows 1252 character set eg something like:

Dim TestString As String
For I = 33 to 255
    TestString = TestString & Chr(I)
Next
TestString = TestString & Chr(13) & Chr(10)

Dim Windows1252 As String = Chr(27) & Chr(116) & Chr(14)

SendToPrinter(TestString)
SendToPrinter(Windows1252)
SendToPrinter(TestString)

 

[Star-Dust]

To get those characters into a Chinese printer you need to change the CharSet Encoding and possibly the codePage.

With my library I would do this to see which CharSet contains those characters:

For Each EC As String In Array As String("Cp1025","GB18030","GB2312","windows-1250","windows-1251","windows-1252","windows-1253","windows-1254","windows-1257")
    Log(EC)
    Printer.CharSet=EC
    Printer.AddBuffer_WriteLine(EC)
    Printer.AddBuffer_WriteLine("á é í ó ú Á É Í Ó Ú ñ Ñ ç Ç €")
Next

 

[vecino]

Hi, I am testing with this one:

Bluetooth ESC/POS Printer Class

For the last couple of weeks I have been playing with an 80mm Bluetooth ESC/POS thermal printer I bought off eBay, new and delivered, for the ludicrously cheap price of £20. While the print quality, particularly of images with large areas of black (they are gray due to power supply or thermal...

www.b4x.com

Do you think I can adapt it?

Ah, I think so, I'll give it a try.

 

[Star-Dust]

I think so

 

[vecino]

Well, here is the proof you have indicated.
You see lowercase accented vowels and the euro symbol.
The accented uppercase vowels and the ñÑ are not there.