Alpha Software Mobile Development Tools:   Alpha Anywhere    |   Alpha TransForm subscribe to our YouTube Channel  Follow Us on LinkedIn  Follow Us on Twitter  Follow Us on Facebook

Announcement

Collapse

The Alpha Software Forum Participation Guidelines

The Alpha Software Forum is a free forum created for Alpha Software Developer Community to ask for help, exchange ideas, and share solutions. Alpha Software strives to create an environment where all members of the community can feel safe to participate. In order to ensure the Alpha Software Forum is a place where all feel welcome, forum participants are expected to behave as follows:
  • Be professional in your conduct
  • Be kind to others
  • Be constructive when giving feedback
  • Be open to new ideas and suggestions
  • Stay on topic


Be sure all comments and threads you post are respectful. Posts that contain any of the following content will be considered a violation of your agreement as a member of the Alpha Software Forum Community and will be moderated:
  • Spam.
  • Vulgar language.
  • Quotes from private conversations without permission, including pricing and other sales related discussions.
  • Personal attacks, insults, or subtle put-downs.
  • Harassment, bullying, threatening, mocking, shaming, or deriding anyone.
  • Sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, ableist, or otherwise discriminatory jokes and language.
  • Sexually explicit or violent material, links, or language.
  • Pirated, hacked, or copyright-infringing material.
  • Encouraging of others to engage in the above behaviors.


If a thread or post is found to contain any of the content outlined above, a moderator may choose to take one of the following actions:
  • Remove the Post or Thread - the content is removed from the forum.
  • Place the User in Moderation - all posts and new threads must be approved by a moderator before they are posted.
  • Temporarily Ban the User - user is banned from forum for a period of time.
  • Permanently Ban the User - user is permanently banned from the forum.


Moderators may also rename posts and threads if they are too generic or do not property reflect the content.

Moderators may move threads if they have been posted in the incorrect forum.

Threads/Posts questioning specific moderator decisions or actions (such as "why was a user banned?") are not allowed and will be removed.

The owners of Alpha Software Corporation (Forum Owner) reserve the right to remove, edit, move, or close any thread for any reason; or ban any forum member without notice, reason, or explanation.

Community members are encouraged to click the "Report Post" icon in the lower left of a given post if they feel the post is in violation of the rules. This will alert the Moderators to take a look.

Alpha Software Corporation may amend the guidelines from time to time and may also vary the procedures it sets out where appropriate in a particular case. Your agreement to comply with the guidelines will be deemed agreement to any changes to it.



Bonus TIPS for Successful Posting

Try a Search First
It is highly recommended that a Search be done on your topic before posting, as many questions have been answered in prior posts. As with any search engine, the shorter the search term, the more "hits" will be returned, but the more specific the search term is, the greater the relevance of those "hits". Searching for "table" might well return every message on the board while "tablesum" would greatly restrict the number of messages returned.

When you do post
First, make sure you are posting your question in the correct forum. For example, if you post an issue regarding Desktop applications on the Mobile & Browser Applications board , not only will your question not be seen by the appropriate audience, it may also be removed or relocated.

The more detail you provide about your problem or question, the more likely someone is to understand your request and be able to help. A sample database with a minimum of records (and its support files, zipped together) will make it much easier to diagnose issues with your application. Screen shots of error messages are especially helpful.

When explaining how to reproduce your problem, please be as detailed as possible. Describe every step, click-by-click and keypress-by-keypress. Otherwise when others try to duplicate your problem, they may do something slightly different and end up with different results.

A note about attachments
You may only attach one file to each message. Attachment file size is limited to 2MB. If you need to include several files, you may do so by zipping them into a single archive.

If you forgot to attach your files to your post, please do NOT create a new thread. Instead, reply to your original message and attach the file there.

When attaching screen shots, it is best to attach an image file (.BMP, .JPG, .GIF, .PNG, etc.) or a zip file of several images, as opposed to a Word document containing the screen shots. Because Word documents are prone to viruses, many message board users will not open your Word file, therefore limiting their ability to help you.

Similarly, if you are uploading a zipped archive, you should simply create a .ZIP file and not a self-extracting .EXE as many users will not run your EXE file.
See more
See less

Send printer control codes

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

    Send printer control codes

    Hello,

    I had the occasion to need to send control codes to a printer/cash drawer from within A5. I wrote a small exe that accepts command line paramaters that can be called with sys_shell(). I thought this might be of use to some of you out there. I named the file SendStr.exe. It accepts numerical parameter on the command line. By entering SendStr on the command line by itself the program will print to screen a short list of instructions.

    The first parameter must be a number between 1 & 4 inclusive. 1 represents lpt1, 2 represents lpt2, 3 represents com1 and 4 represents com2. Each parameter after that must be the decimal representation of the ascii character you wish to send to the device, usually a printer. For instance, to send the string 'JIM' to a printer on lpt1, followed by a form feed:

    sendstr 1 74 73 77 12

    1 denotes output to lpt1, 74, 73, 77 are the decimal codes for J,I,M respectively, and 12 is the ascii code for a form feed.

    Each parameter needs only to be seperated by a space. From within A5, assuming the sendstr.exe is in the root directory of the c: drive, the following should work:

    sys_shell("c:sendstr.exe 1 74 73 77 12", 2)

    This should make it easy to send control characters to printers from within A5. Feel free to use this as you wish, but as a word of caution, this is just written and untested. I didn't do any bounds checking except for the first parameter, and I haven't checked it with anything except a printer on lpt1.

    Hope it helps,

    Jim Chapman


    #2
    RE: Send printer control codes

    Thanks for the tip on printer control codes for A5. I wonder if you do have a chance to test this if you wouldn't mind dropping a note regarding your success and any corrections. I'll certainly be glad to do the same. Thanks again.

    Comment


      #3
      RE: Send printer control codes

      If anyone does any testing out there, I am wondering if this could be used to send data to a "pole display" in an invoicing application....the amount due would be sent to the display on say com2, and the "open drawer" code could be sent to the cash drawer on com1....would make a great POS tool. Often customers misunderstand the amount due when only verbally given by the salesperson.

      Comment


        #4
        RE: Send printer control codes

        I belive the pole uses serial ports so this program will no work However I used a program called WinWedge and it works good.

        Comment


          #5
          RE: Send printer control codes

          Hello Michael,

          >>I belive the pole uses serial ports so this program will no work However I used a program called WinWedge and it works good<<

          I designed this program to be able to send to lpt1, lpt2, com1 and com2, so as long as the pole is on com1 or com2 it should work. This utility is 16 bit and will probably not run on winNT or win2000. I've written an updated version that should run on these platforms as well, but, as before, I haven't done much testing yet, but appears to work just fine. I will post it if there's any interest.

          Jim Chapman

          Comment


            #6
            RE: Send printer control codes

            Jim,

            I would be interested in the 32bit version of sendstr.exe if you still have it available. I am writing a POS app for a customer who is using win2000 machines. Would you be able to post it and/or email it to me?

            Comment


              #7
              RE: Send printer control codes

              To All,

              Attached is a 32 bit version of my send string utility.

              Jim

              Comment


                #8
                RE: Send printer control codes

                I assume that the parameters are the same as the 16-bit version?????

                Comment


                  #9
                  RE: Send printer control codes

                  Hello Mike,

                  Yes, all parameters are the same.

                  Jim

                  Comment


                    #10
                    RE: Send printer control codes

                    Jim,

                    Any possibility of having something to receive data through the printer/com ports?


                    regards
                    Mustaq

                    Comment


                      #11
                      Re: Send printer control codes

                      Hi Jim... i would like to leave here my
                      sincere Thank You
                      for making that tool.

                      Its working quite well temporarily with controling a epson printer
                      that has no LF buttons...

                      older ESC/P2 printer (Epson stylus 1000) is disabled because no ink found to makit work.

                      so i am controling a Epson stylus Color 1290 by LPT1 with the remaning ESC codes that it suports.

                      the ESC codes i took of a PDF file found on a .ru site

                      Here is what i am using:

                      � Advances n/216 (??) of a inch

                      sendstr 1 27 74 n

                      n = 0 ~ 255


                      � Advances 1/2 of a A4 portrait page

                      sendstr 1 27 74 255
                      sendstr 1 27 74 255
                      sendstr 1 27 74 255
                      sendstr 1 27 74 255


                      � Line Feed

                      sendstr 1 13 10

                      1 = LPT1
                      13 = CR
                      10 = LF


                      � Select Condensed (not used/ not tested)

                      sendstr 1 15
                      1 = LPT1
                      15 = Condensed

                      � Line-feed

                      sendstr 1 12
                      1 = LPT1
                      12 = FF

                      � Load Paper (this one didn work)

                      sendstr 1 27 25 n

                      1 = LPT1
                      27 25 = load/eject
                      n = 49 = load from bin 1 of cut sheet feeder
                      --


                      Thanks

                      Cheers
                      Ric

                      Comment


                        #12
                        Re: Send printer control codes

                        Jim, I am looking for a pure dos version of sendstr.exe. Is there one?

                        Thanks,

                        Steve

                        Comment

                        Working...
                        X