Arabic Fast Print on Receipt Printers

• Download demo application & control - 348 Kb

The main screen of the demo program.

Introduction

This control is designed for those Arabic developers who are developing systems with receipt printers and want to print Arabic/English characters. This component does not use the graphic mode drivers supplied by the printer manufacturers.

It's fully tested over Citizen CBM series, and under testing on Epson TM series.

The control uses ESC commands which is the most common among several manufacturers of receipt printers.

History

We developed a POS software, and one of the problems we faced was how to print Arabic characters on the receipt printer without using the Windows drivers, and to print Arabic/English at the same line, and considering the language orientation. All this should be faster than that by the Windows graphic drivers.

So, we solved this problem. We developed a VC++ code and solved the problem in a genius way. And for other developers, we made an ActiveX control to deal with the receipt printers.

Usage

The main features:

The developer can use the character set(s) downloaded into the printer, but how to avoid that headache?

1. It's ActiveX control, can be embedded into any other development language.
2. It uses the common ESC commands for the printers, so it can work with many printer brands.
3. It works, even if the desired language character set is not downloaded into the printer ROM. We printed Arabic on a Citizen receipt printer in CBM printers center in Japan where: No Arabic character set on the printer, no windows OS supporting Arabic!!
4. It's not just Arabic, it can print any other language characters. First, we download the characters into the ActiveX. Besides English.
5. It's not required that the Windows operating system support that language at all. We print Arabic characters using Citizen receipt printers & Epson on Citizen Japan Ltd. on Windows computer with JP Languages!
6. It's so easy to use, all the user has to do:
   1. Insert the ActiveX in to his program.
   2. Control.Open (The COM port used here / LPT port).
   3. Choose the Character Mode (32 International characters, or extended 79 characters for Arabic figures).
   4. Load characters (once the control is open).
   5. Choose the language to print and print whatever you want.
   6. User can: print empty line, change orientation, skip line(s), print with/out line feeds, ...

   And at the end of program, just do close the control.

Sample code:

// The activeX control name is: PrnX for example
void InitPrn (CString pComPort)
{
    PrnX.OpenPort (pComPort);
    PrnX.Reset(); //Rest the printer

    //1 = 79 Figures(extended mode for Citizin CBM printers and similars)
    //2 = 32 Figures(restricted mode for Epson & 32
    //       International characters only)
    PrnX.SetChMode (1);

    PrnX.Init();
    //Initialize the printer status & buffer

    PrnX.LoadCharsDefs();
    //Load the international characters into the printer

}

void PrintText (CString pText, short pAllignment)
{
     // Left, Center, Right PrnX.SetAllignment (pAllignment);

     //vLines = Number of empty lines after the print operation. Can be Zero
     short vLines = 2;  

     // Print now as you want.
     // pText may be " any local/english text here
     // -arabic version here- " PrnX.CBMPrint (pText, vLines);

     //And can use PrnX.FeedLine(vLines) also

     //And can do PrnX.CutSheet() to cut the paper if the printer support it
}

void ClosePrnPort ()
{
  PrnX.ClosePort();
}

It's so simple, and very small in size.

If any one wants a demo, we are happy to send the demo version immediately. (Arabic characters exist now, other languages upon request.)