Hello there,
I am implementing a business logic where I need to send thousands of serial number with other data related to the serial number to ZT411 printer. My application is using Java to communicate with the printer and I have prepared the ZPL code for the print format along with the variable data's in it.
Now I want to know the best practice to implement this situation. For e.g. do I send all the serials in one go to the printer or send them in chucks of 100 or so.
Also I want to know for e.g. I send a chunk of 100 serials to print, how can the application know that the printer has finished printing those 100 serials and I can now send the other batches till all the serials are printed. I mean printer acknowledgment to the application that printing has finished.
I will appreciate if I get feedback on it.
cheers
Zolf
1 Replies
The best practices are documented in this article: Best Practices for Printing. In general, thermal printers are considered as slow and single-tasked accessories. Printers print one label at a time. Labels (a.k.a. jobs) should be serialized and sent to a printer one at a time. Depending on the data size of the labels, we need to be mindful when sending the data to a printer as we don't want to overflow the receiving buffer on the printer. It's always recommended to check the printer status (via the getCurrentStatus() API) prior to sending data to the printer and check the printer status again prior to closing the connection.