Printing barcodes on laser printer?

Archived from groups: comp.periphs.printers (More info?)

Have you considered downloading PCL soft fonts to the printers? The
font files can reside on your host system and you can send them to the
printer ahead of each print job. Then the PCL code in your document
can select the barcode font, print the data, and switch back to
whatever text font you are using. The fonts should work on any PCL5
or PCL6 laser printer.

By default, downloaded fonts are stored in the printer's RAM. Since
they disappear if you power down the printer it's a good idea to
resend them with each print job just to make certain they are in the
printer. The download takes only 1 or 2 seconds, so it doesn't hurt
performance that much. If your printer has a hard disk or flash
memory you can add some PJL instructions to send downloaded fonts to
disk or flash; after that the fonts are permanently installed in the
printer. If you can't find flash modules for your printers, try
www.memsolutions.com.

You have 20 printers and 7 sites, so an economical way to obtain the
fonts would be the MEC Software Barcode Soft Font Generator. A
10-site license for Code 39 costs $1,125; not exactly free, but around
$57 for each of your 20 printers... better than $5K for 20 font DIMMs
(or $9K for BarDIMMs). For more info look at
www.makebarcode.com/software/printerfonts.html#BarGen

Bob Lounsbury
The Barcode Software Center
www.makebarcode.com


>>JH wrote:
>>We need to add barcodes to forms we send to laser printers. Our
apps run on Unix & Linux and generate PCL output, so we can't use any
of the Windows-based tools. The JetCAPS BarDIMM would work, but it
does way more than we need (we only need Code 39 barcodes), is
expensive (around $450 each), and is only available for specific HP
LaserJet models. Barcode font DIMMs are cheaper (around $250) but not
available for all of the brands/models of printers we have. Cobra
makes an external adapter that works with any laser printer, but it is
way too expensive (around $600 each).

We have 20 printers at 7 locations, and would like a solution that
won't break the bank and will work with the mixture of laser printers
we have. We would also like to be able to upgrade or change printers
in the future without having to exchange or throw out any
model-specific plug-in modules. Any ideas?