I need to create a label but i need the objects to be rotated in the label 90 degree

[titoneon]

I have a new printer label, "SMART LABEL PRINTER 440", this printer use labels that eject the label opposite or at 90 degree VS a dot matrix printer, so i have an existing application that is actually printing to the dot matrix printer but i want to use this new printer and of course when i print there the data printed is perpendicular to the label, instead of printing along the way the label eject or parallel to it, i am pretty sure the program that calls to run this label has some kind of instruction to make this label to print to the dot matrix printer for hence i am not able to print correctly to the new printer but is there any code that i can put in that prg file to make the data to be rotated 90 degree ?
The application i am using is SBT PRO 5.0 , from the Purchase order, transaction, receive orders is where each time i receive an item it will print a label.
Note: i know it is got be some code into the prg file that is causing the data to print in a particular way, cause i created a new label from scratch in vfp 5.0 and i printed the label and it came out fine in the new printer.
Please if you have a way to help me, it is very very appreciated
Thanks a lot
Ernest0

 

[Mike Lewis]

Are you using the Smart Label Printer's own printer driver, or that of the old dot matrix printer? If you are using the label printer's driver, then it's likely that it will handle the rotation for you. I don't know anything about this particular printer, but I can't imagine the manufacturers would expect users to provide their own software to do the rotation.

Perhaps we can check that point before going any further.

Mike

__________________________________
Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

Visual FoxPro articles, tips and downloads

 

[Olaf Doschke]

I agree to mike, typically the printer driver let's you set the page orientation or in this case label orientation. That said in REPORTBEHAVIOR 90 mode you can rotate report controls, but it shouldn't be needed.

Bye, Olaf.

 

[titoneon]

Hi Guys,
I am using the smart label printer as well as the lattes driver for it in win xp pro, as i said before i created a new label from scratch and it print correctly on the smart label printer, but when i am printing an exiting label from the application i mentioned in my post it does not print as it is suppose to be, it print perpendicular to the label, again i am wondering if there is probably some code in the existing application to push the label to print in that partcular way to the dot matrix panasonic printer
Thanks guys
Ernesto

 

[Mike Lewis]

So you're saying that the application rotates the label for printing on the dot matrix printer, and you now want to suppress that rotation. I didn't get that from your original post.

If that's right, it sounds like you need to talk to the SBT Pro vendors. It's not a generic FoxPro problem.

Mike

__________________________________
Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

Visual FoxPro articles, tips and downloads

 

[titoneon]

You are right Mike, it is not foxpro problem, i was looking for a tip to see i can put some code to rotate the objects on the label 90 degree.
Thanks
Ernesto

 

[Olaf Doschke]

>i am wondering if there is probably some code in the existing application to push the label to print in that partcular way to the dot matrix panasonic printer

Ask the SBT Pro vendors, as Mike says.
Is there no choice of printer in the application? If not, then setting it to be the default windows printer may help for the old labels.

Bye, Olaf.

 

[titoneon]

Thanks Mike, Olaf, will give a try today but SBT PRO 5.0 does not have support anylonger
Ernesto

 

[JRB-Bldr]

SBT PRO 5.0 does not have support any longer

This is only a wild guess, but have you tried contacting SBTBill?
Based on his forum 'handle' I would guess that he is pretty familiar with SBT.

He has a number of posts on this forum. The most recent was: thread184-1714257

And there is a forum area: SBT solutions Forum forum640

Good Luck,
JRB-Bldr

 

[Mike Lewis]

I've been thinking about this some more. I wonder if the following would work.

Ernesto, if I've understood it right, the application correctly prints the rotated label to a dot-matrix printer. As far as I know, no dot-matrix is capable of printing rotated text. That's not the way they work. So I'm guessing that the application generates the label as a bitmap, and it's the bitmap that it sends to the printer.

If that's right, it should be possible to capture the bitmap - which is simply an image of the label - in a file. You might be able to use a PDF printer driver to output it as a PDF, or there might be some way of saving it as a BMP or JPG. Once you've got that, is should be a simple matter to print that image on the label printer.

Having glanced at the documentation that comes with the label printer (which I found at

http://www.seiko.co.uk/page.php?n=288),

I see it comes with an interactive utility that lets you print whatever you like to the label. It's possible that that utility will let you print the label image.

This is just off the top of my head, and I might be talking rubbish. But it might be worth looking into further. If nothing else, the interactive utility might provide some other way of solving the problem.

Mike

__________________________________
Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

Visual FoxPro articles, tips and downloads

 

[titoneon]

Mike and Olaf,
Thanks a million for your input, you guys are awesome, always there to help, i really appreciate you don't let me down when i need it but i already figure out that all i have to do is create a new label according to the label size running in the new label printer, copy and paste in the new label, the labels and fields from the old label used in dot matrix and go to the prg file that was called the label name and replace with my new label.lbx, so i delete the old label name and rename my new label as the old label since it is called from that prg file, Viola got it, anyway i just again thank you guys for all.
Ernesto

 

[Mike Lewis]

Delighted to hear you got it working, Ernesto. Thanks for letting us know the solution.

Mike

__________________________________
Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

Visual FoxPro articles, tips and downloads