Replacing Jetform - Open Source Barcode Printing Alternatives? 36
diabolus_in_america asks: "I work for a mid-size manufacturer. Currently we use Jetform running on HP/UX to print the majority of our barcode labels to Zebra thermal printers. However, Jetform is a dead technology, and we are would like to look at open source alternatives. Is there an open source alternative to Jetform? What we need is a system that lets us mark up and design a barcode label which can then be populated from data files at print time. In its day, the Jetform system was an excellent and quick solution to barcode printing. But those days are over, at least for us, and we'd like to move to an open source alternative, if one exists."
Why is it dead ? (Score:3, Insightful)
However, are you sure you have to switch now ? What exactly is it that you can't do that you want to do ? Just because you haven't seen a gushy cutting edge article about jetforms in the trade press lately, is no reason to drop it. Does every portion of your business have to be a current fad ?
Barcode printing (Score:2, Informative)
Teaching people to use google since 1998
Re:Barcode printing - YAY!!! New acronym... (Score:3)
Read The Friggin' Results [google.com].
I was going to suggest that he do a google search, then I saw that it returns a bunch of crap. I'm guessing that this guy tried google, and didn't find anything useful. That's why he's actually asking a bunch of thinking humans what ideas they might have.
Re:Barcode printing - YAY!!! New acronym... (Score:3, Informative)
Jetform is great because it has such a huge libary of printers to choose from... Upgraded your printers? No worries, just recompile your forms and presto, they're working again, no need to muck around with printer control codes, no need to recompile programs (good!!) or ch
bar codes (Score:3, Informative)
It's a Python library to generate PDF files.
I think I've seen some support for barcodes there.
Another one (Score:2)
Re:bar codes (Score:3, Insightful)
The printers in question are not normal printers. They do not understand that much and you really do not need to be trying to convert a PDF into a format that they can understand. The printers actually -know- how to print a barcode. You setup a field for it and give the printer some numbers and it'll put it where you want it in the format you want it.
Reportlab
Re:bar codes (Score:4, Informative)
Intermec IPL
B17;o500,100;f3;c6,0,0;h200;w4;i1;d3,12345
Zebra ZPL
^FO100,725^BCN,200,N,N,N,N^FV12345^FS
Eltron EPL
B700,500,2,1,4,12,200,N,"12345"
If you are really interested in learning the languages, you can download them in PDF format from the manufacturers. (Eltron is now owned by Zebra)
We're currently using software from Loftware to handle most of our barcode printing. It has a decent (but not great) GUI designer. And it's not cheap or OS. My biggest problem with it is that it stores the printer type in the label. It's entirely too rigid. For example; we purchased Intermec 3400D printers to create PDF417s. But all of the rest of our printers are 3400Bs. While the D model can do everything a B model can do, Loftware doesn't allow you to print a B label on a D printer. OTOH, it has a nice feature where you can use a label design as a template, then drop a text data file in a directory and it will print the label. It's a simple way to interface with other applications.
BTW, an earlier poster implied that UPC was synonymous with barcode. That's like telling someone who asks for a PC to go see Dell. It may be one of the more commonly known formats, but there is much more to them than UPCs. (Or EAN barcodes for the non-american viewers)
Same here. (Score:4, Informative)
What we wanted to do is use color thermal or rollfed inkjet to print a picture of the product on the carton label with the barcode.
Every rollfed color printer we looked at had fatal flaws. Most used a proprietary language for programming. "But we have Windows print driver!!" Big fucking deal, didn't help us, there's no windows software that can do what we needed anyway. Why are open standards to damn hard to understand? We'd have probably bought your hardware if you hadn't decided to be assholes.
Only one supported a standard language, PCL/XL, and that was the color rollfed inkjet. Which unfortunately used proprietary HP ink cartridges that cost $199 a piece. That's for each color, so $800 to change all ink cartridges. They were only like 350ml IIRC.
Anyway, our plan was to use enscript, along with imagemagick, and some other piece to create the barcode (like pbmupc maybe), and then compose them all into an image with shell scripts, and print them the normal way.
Unfortunately, we gave up on the project when we realized that no one makes suitable hardware.
Re:Same here. (Score:2)
Re:Same here. (Score:1)
What they do instead, and had been doing, is taking an actual label from inside the box and cutting it, a
Re:Same here. (Score:2)
I've never had a chance to play with it myself, but I found this article [renderx.com] that discusses the process.
Re:Same here. (Score:1)
Re:Same here. (Score:2)
If the color portion of your label is always the same (ie., each product picture is the same) you could try getting labels pre-printed with the static portions and the printing the dynamic portions with a black-and-white printer. This won't work well if you need to change the color picture more than once a roll of labels, though.
Re:Same here. (Score:1)
I don't want to put low res versions of the images into a database either, I just want them dynamically generated on the spot. We dynamically generate JPGs from them for the web site, so it's not too slow to do on the fly.
You can see why any Windows solution is highly crippled in this area. I'd basically have to write something fr
Re:Same here. (Score:2)
What sort of volume (labels/minute) do you need? In what sort of environment will these be printed and applied (office, assembly line, etc.)? How permanent does the image have to be? How small and finicky is the barcode? How much of an issue is the cost of the label itself and the printer consumables? Do you need automated print-and-apply?
The first solution that pops to mind is to get a standard color laser printer and a box of Avery labels, but that's only good for low-volume runs. There are some
Re:Same here. (Score:1)
The volume isn't particularly high, maybe a thousand per day per printer. They would be applied in an assembly line kind of environment. The image would need to stand
Re:Same here. (Score:1)
Re:Same here. (Score:1)
The main problem I think is that color lasers are generally multipass systems. The paper goes around and around in a circle, 4 times, once for each primary toner.
I think I remember seeing some extremely expensive singlepass color laser systems, but basically you are paying for 4 complete printers. IIRC they were way out of our price range.
Bar-code printers (Score:3, Informative)
I used to work a great deal in the bar-code field. I remember connecting Intermec printers to AS400 systems. This involved using Windows software to design a label graphically, then export to some data files that were kinda like XML but a proprietary format. Two files, one with the printer instructions and the other with data. The data file would be pasted into AS400 programming code and every time a label was to be printed, the label layout and the data stream would be sent to the printer. I believe the language was JCL.
I am sure Zebra has ways to do what you are looking to accomplish. I doubt seriously, there are many Open Source packages that can do all that you need to do. You need to find a vendor who does value add and works with multiple manufacturers.
It make take some work to find such a vendor, most are simply selling equipment and not providing any value add whatsoever.
Call the Zebra printer manufacturer and they should be able to locate a vendor that can work with you. A simple looksee at their website details the following:
BAR-ONE 5.1 with Accelio Present Central (formerly JetForm Central)
Easy, Cost-Effective Bar Code Printing from ERP Applications
The combined power of BAR-ONE bar code printing software and the Accelio Present Central (formerly Accelio Present Central (formerly JetForm Central)) output-management solutions make integration of bar codes into ERP systems a snap, no matter what the platform. Traditionally, transforming ERP data from existing reports and other ASCII formats into high-quality bar code labels has been an expensive and time-consuming custom programming task. But now it's as simple as a point and a click, thanks to a groundbreaking software pairing developed jointly by Zebra Technologies and JetForm Corporation.
Looks like JetForm is not dead but in partnership with Zebra and the new system is called Accelio Present Central.
http://www.zebra.com/SD/barone_jetform.htm
Not too hard -- roll your own custom stuff. (Score:3, Informative)
The software was rather cumbersome to even get simple tasks done. Opening the printing software, selecting the proper tag to print an 'On Sale for $X.XX' sticker and running through the menus to find the proper Print screen and typing in the price was too much time and energy for somebody who just wanted 300 tags quick.
So, I started dumping the printer's output to a file instead of the serial port. A little head scratching later and I knew where all the variables were.
Monarch was even better IIRC -- they actually published instruction codes for their stuff. Dumping to a file was sometimes easier than properly reading documentation too.
The actual tag layout instructions are probably mindnumbingly simple. The area that's really lacking (or at least it was in '97ish) was getting things hooked up to a proper database that wasn't inflexible as all get out. You could rig an ODBC driver up to an Access DB but it was crufty, and the tag designer software was a bear. It was always much easier to hack my own little job together.
Yes, they still use some of it to this day.
Personally an on-the-fly label designer never made a whole lot of sense to me for these products. It was nice if you wanted to dump a template out but using it to actually hook up to your data was never a good idea. On top of that you sometimes get people trying to design the labels that don't realize why they can't fit 2k of data into a 2x2 square. Maybe that was my just my boss though.
"Why can't you fit more than 30 characters in that box?"
"Physics."
"Oh, 'cmon, it has to be possible."
"Ok, here's a pen. Try and fit more than 30 letters in this space."
Thankfully it was my mother, I could get away with that.
Do your own... (Score:5, Informative)
Depending on your needs, it should only take a matter of an hour or two to code up something to generate ZPL from the user's requests, or you may be able to lex/yacc it from another format. Read the programmers manual that came with the printers (or at least should have). There are plenty of examples in there for barcodes, text, images, reverse printing, vertical printing, etc. I've done this for inventory coding (probably simpler than your needs), and it only took about 20 minutes of trial-and-error to get my ZPL script right. (And for reference, the format is a lot like a simplified PCL, so if you've had experience with PCL, it should be cake.)
Re:Do your own... (Score:3, Informative)
Also, doing it this way will allow you to use the daisy-chain feature of the printers, since directing output to any printer on the chain is just another ZPL command. The ZP
FYI: JetForm/Accelio was acquired by Adobe (Score:2, Informative)
A brief tour of the Adobe website, such as the Enterprise products [adobe.com] reveals products like Adobe Central Pro Output Server [adobe.com] which traces its heritage back to the same JetForm Central product (or JetForm Server for old-timers) that likely produced the story-submitter's barcodes.
So while the name JetForm may n
Re: (Score:2)
perl's GD::Barcode (Score:2)
I've used it for a neat project where the only input device for a kiosk was a barcode scanner. (We made this funky menu system for administration(loading content and downloading logs) which involved bouncing the focus between choices and you would swipe the 'admin' barcode when you wanted to choose an option.)
Krysalis Java/JSP barcode library (Score:1)
Kbarcode (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Kbarcode (Score:1)
JPGraph (Score:1)
Alternatives (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Alternatives (Score:1)
Although one ingenious user did actually create barcodes with MS Paint. Nothing could scan them, but they sure looked good.
Write it yourself! (Score:2)
did you check the zebra website ? (Score:1)
you should have checked the zebra website, which has the whole enchilada of manuals available at http://www.zebra.com/SS/manuals.htm [zebra.com].
They have a pain-in-the-ass registration thing, but check those links, you can wget the pdfs without even accepting the stupid click through agreement...
Fonts (Score:2)
However for other printers, the obvious device-independent method would be to use a barcode font. Years ago I had a TTF font like that for Windows, and some Word macros to put Codabar codes on envelopes. (This was the early 90's, and I didn't discover Linux until '94, sorry.)
Today I found this:
http://user.it.uu.se/~jan/barfonts/
Looks like just the thing for generating Postscript docs with barcodes in them.
Here's "I Shot the S