Help Receipt Printing

[Steve]

I need to know how to do really fast Receipt printing.
I have a Point of sale application which prints a sales Receipt.
The printer is a Citizen CBM1000
I created a report to print the receipt when the transaction finished but it
is really slow compared to Applications like MYOB retail manager.
Can any one help with this?

 

[Albert D. Kallal]

The one trick in most of these cases is simply to install the printer driver
that comes with the actual device, and then be sure that you only use the
printer fonts that the device supports.

This often means do not use truetype fonts at all, but only the several
printer fonts that get installed when you actually installed device. you can
also often itchy of the same gold by installing a generic Epson printer
device, and choosing and using only the generic printer fonts again. once
again, ensure that you avoid all truetype fonts.

If you take the above path and follow it, you should be able to get high
performance high speed printing from your applications....

 

[Steve]

that sounds good. i had installed the driver that came with the printer. but
how do you find out what the printer fonts are! there is nothing in the
driver info to tell me.

 

[Albert D. Kallal]

that sounds good. i had installed the driver that came with the printer.
but
how do you find out what the printer fonts are! there is nothing in the
driver info to tell me.

When you start building the access report (and I do SUGGEST you start from
scratch), you nothing when you select he font you will see TT, or a simple
printer icon in the font drop down list. Stick to the "printer" type icons
for the fonts (you likely only have 1 or 2 choices). It been awhile, but the
fonts are usually called elite, courier etc.

That fond will/should be a 10, or 12 cpi type front. Also, be VERY careful
to line up text boxes on each line, and then make sure there is a wee bit of
space between the text boxes you place on the next line below. Remember, you
want coax the printer into using NON graphics to output the text layout you
choose.

If the printer has to resort to graphics for the output of the report, then
it will run very very slow.

Another solltuion that can help is to istall a text onlyl printer, and again
you may have better luck selecting text/printer only fonts...

If all the above faiels, you might consier outputing a text file, and then
"copy" that text file to the printer. it's been a awhile since I done
that..but, that's also a possbile way to advoid kicking out graphics.

I don't suppose I'm adding much more information at this point in time by
telling you that you want to advoid any graphical type layout such as lines
etc in your report....

 

[Steve]

thanks for all that and it soundes realy good but will it make the printing
much faster?
the printer we are using is a new thermal high speed 40 colum printer
dedicated Receipt Printer. MYOB retail manager prints out aproximatly 10 to
15 lines of alighned test in aproximatly 2 to 3 seconds

 

[Albert D. Kallal]

thanks for all that and it soundes realy good but will it make the
printing
much faster?

Generally, yes, it does make those dot matrix and other printers run fast
since you using the "built in" printing system, not rending the output as
graphics.

the printer we are using is a new thermal high speed 40 colum printer
dedicated Receipt Printer. MYOB retail manager prints out aproximatly 10
to
15 lines of alighned test in aproximatly 2 to 3 seconds

Well, as far as I know, MYOB is written i ms-access...is it not??? (at least
I thought it was...).

If the playing around and building a test report using those printer only
fronts don't fix this, then you have to consider the other approach (the
text file idea, or even perhaps opening the device directly..and using print
command (the manual for the printer likely has some code examples).

 

[Steve]

hi albert
well i tryed creatin a new report using printer fonts and i beleve they are
the ones that shiped with this printer the font name is "fontA48c" and has a
priner simbel next to it this is simular to the paper size name in the
windows print driver. i set all the text to 10 point on printing it made very
littel differance at all.
i then tryed putting all the text together and puting it all in to a text
box, this mad a littel differance but not much.

yes MYOB retail manager is MSAssecc 95 i have my application linked to its
tables to be able to share an inventery file.

i wish i could figer out how they are doing there docket printing!

 

[Steve]

hi what you are saying is corect but how do i do this. i have looked at the
printer driver and i cannot see any place that i can tell it to use built in
fonts or chang any resolution settings! can this be do with vba code?

 

[Steve]

hi
well i have looked again and ther is no place to ajust the print quolity. it
is pre set and can not be changed. as i said this is a Citizen CBM 1000
Receipt printer (THERMAIL) i am shor ther must be another way to do this
using VBA code as MYOB retail Maniger is on the same net work and using the
same printer and print driver and as youy said it prints as fast as it can
feed the paper yet Access prints realy slowly! ther has to be an answer to
this.