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I have acquired an Epson thermal printer (TM-T82II) with a control utility (APD5) that allows me to configure and test the printer. I use the utility to (try to) print barcodes, but cannot find any documentation on how to make use of the Code128 support I need.

I want to print out a Code 128 barcode for "PQR123X1122331807110011223344". I seem to be able to do this by specifying a test string of "{APQR123X1122331807110011223344" to encode the string in Font A, and likewise use "{BPQR123X1122331807110011223344" to encode it entirely in Font B. Both generate barcodes too wide for the paper I have. However, there is a large run of digits after the "X" which is more efficiently encoded in Font C and that I know will fit (I have an example from another printer). The obvious thing of using "{APQR123X{C1122331807110011223344" produces garbage.

Can anyone point to documentation that unravels how Epson do font-switching in Code 128?

omatai
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  • Check out this link: https://www.idautomation.com/barcode-fonts/code-128/user-manual.html – user3272686 Jul 10 '18 at 22:55
  • I've stared long and hard at that table for days on end, and not managed to make sense of it. I'd had glimpses of hope out of it by producing barcodes that encoded digit pairs like "98" using a "b", but never have I produced any digit pairs lower than "32". – omatai Jul 11 '18 at 00:15
  • For those voting to close: I'd be happy to have code to produce a barcode (that's my ultimate aim). And I'd be happy to be told that the utility cannot produce every possible barcode. Either way, I need some angle into understanding how to encode the text I want my program to print out. Using the utility seems like the faster option than writing code. – omatai Jul 11 '18 at 00:17

1 Answers1

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@Omatai,

Epson's ESC/POS printer language does not use fonts for rendering barcodes. If you are directly sending escape codes to the Epson printer, GS w is the command to set the barcode width in ESC/POS, where w is a number between from 2 (thinnest) to 6 (thickest) which specifies the width of the barcode's minimum element. The actual measurement is dependent on the model of the Epson printer.

Epson ESC/POS Documentation: https://reference.epson-biz.com/modules/ref_escpos/index.php?content_id=2

To help you further, this group would need to know more about the programming model that you are using and the associated code that you are attempting to use.

Terry Warwick, Microsoft

Terry Warwick
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