Home

EPL2 Tips

• The Eltron or Zebra printer needs to be installed with a RAW driver/queue. If stuff doesn't print right, check that first.
• Each command sent to the printer needs to end with a LINEFEED only (\x0A). You can't just use '\n' or '\r'
• The bare minimum to print a label:

N\x0A
ZT\x0A
P1\x0A

• Because the GW command requires BINARY data, you can't view the file with a text editor. You'll need to use a HEX viewer to see the actual contents
• The image format is pretty specific. PCX is almost extinct but Gimp or IfranView can export to that type. The image should report Colors: 2 (1 BitsPerPixel). GRAYSCALE won't work, thermal printers only have 1 shade of gray.
• It's possible some of the image (the last column of pixels) will get chopped if it doesn't end in a proper byte
• If you don't set $GW_x and $GW_y the module returns a complete test label to print (which is probably not what you want). Be sure to set both variables to return only the binary data from the image to insert into your EPL2 command.

Requires

• Image::Magick, but apt-get install perlmagick is probably easier then trying to build it via CPAN