Android Question How to print text in graphic mode?

vecino · Jul 19, 2023

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 · Jul 19, 2023

aeric said:
or maybe just

B4X:

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 · Jul 19, 2023

vecino said:
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 · Jul 19, 2023

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 · Jul 19, 2023

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

aeric · Jul 20, 2023

TILogistic said:
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 · Jul 20, 2023

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

You can use custom fonts in B4A.

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

Which library you are using?

vecino · Jul 20, 2023

TILogistic said:
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 · Jul 20, 2023

aeric said:
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 · Jul 20, 2023

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 · Jul 20, 2023

aeric said:
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 · Jul 20, 2023

TILogistic said:
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 · Jul 20, 2023

aeric said:
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 · Jul 20, 2023

TILogistic said:
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 · Jul 20, 2023

vecino said:
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:

B4X:

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 · Jul 20, 2023

emexes said:
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:

B4X:

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 · Jul 20, 2023

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

B4X:

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 · Jul 20, 2023

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:

B4X:

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 · Jul 20, 2023

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 · Jul 20, 2023

I think so

vecino · Jul 20, 2023

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.

Android Question How to print text in graphic mode?

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