Printing ZPL text to Zebra printer with Qprinter adds unwanted spaces

marlloz

Hello all,

I have been trying to print labels with a Zebra printer using QPrinter and a "Generic / Text Only" driver on USB001 local port in Windows 7 64bits with Qt 4.8.5.

Tried doing it like these using the example ZPL command "prn":

@QString prn("^XA^FO121,41^A0N,19,15^FDABC DEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ^FS^XZ");
QPrinter printer(QPrinterInfo::defaultPrinter()); //the default printer is "Generic / Text Only"

// With QTextDocument
QTextDocument doc(prn);
doc.print(&printer);

//With QPainter
QPainter painter(&printer);
painter.drawText(0,0,prn);
printer.newPage();@

Strangely Qt seems to add TAB spaces after letter "I" and " " (space), as far as I have tested.

It prints:

ABC [long space] DEFGHI [long space] JKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ

When it should print like this :

ABC DEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
(tested printing from Notepad and printing to as PDF)

Does any one knows what could be happening?

Thanks.

cccm62

Hi,

I have the same error, did you manage to resolve it?

Printing From ZebraDesigner : OK
Printing the .prn content from notepad : OK
(print on RAW "Generic / Text Only" printer)
Printing the .prn content from Qt : SAME ERROR
=> adds spaces (or TABS)

Thx, Cedric

DocZorg

I know it's been a long time, but I'm running into exactly the same problem, what solution did you come up with?
Thanks for your time.

Violette

Hi guys,
I also have the same problem.
Printing is fine from notepad but not from qt with the exact same string.
It adds spaces after spaces, ':', '-', '/'...
Any solution found since then ??
Thanks,
Violette

Violette

Hi again,

I found a solution for those who may be interested:

Actually some special characters have a meaning for ZPL, but it is possible to replace them by there hexadecimal value preceded by '_'. Like this a '~' can be replaced by '_7e'...
Check the ^FH in the ZPL manual.

At my side I did something like this:

    QString escapedText(textField.text);
    QList<QChar> specialCharacters = QList<QChar>() << '~' << ' ' << ':' << ';' << '.' << '-' << '/' << '\\' << 'I' << '!' << '?' <<
                                                       '"' << '#' << '+' << '*' << '%' << '^' << '>' << '<';
    foreach (QChar ch, specialCharacters)
    {
        escapedText = escapedText.replace(QString(ch), "_" % QString::number(ch.unicode(), 16));
    }
    buildString.append("^FH^FD" % escapedText % "^FS\n");