Re: receipt printing and autocut

[Bob Rasmussen <ras at anzio dot com>]

The saga continues...

I visited Nick Peterson, who asked some recent questions, and played
around with his receipt printing setup. Here is what we have learned so
far. This is with Millennium Silver:

1. When you select "local printer", you are now (as of Silver) able to
choose the printer, and whether to print "text" or "graphics".

2. When you choose "graphics", Mill. uses the Windows printer driver. That
is why you are able to choose the font size. At the end of the job, the
paper is cut. However, a full "page" is ejected.

3. When you choose "text", Mill. prints directly to the Windows spooler,
BYPASSING the printer driver. It doesn't matter what printer driver is
referenced, because its content is not used. Its only purpose is to tell
where to send the output. This is analagous to our software's "spooler
level". This is a step up from prior versions, in that it can write to a
USB printer. (The older version wrote directly to a port, which we call
"raw level"). In text mode, you don't waste paper, but you don't get the
autocut either.

So no joy.

4. The following applies to Epson drivers only (and recent ones, at that).
The driver installation includes a new "port monitor" for an "ESD port"
on, for instance, LPT1. This will normally replace the standard LPT1
driver, which the installation process will delete. However, on the
machines I was investigating there existed BOTH the ESD port driver and
the standard driver. This may have been responsible for the even MORE
bizarre behavior I saw there, where Millennium output was buffered until a
Windows test print (or something else from Windows) was done.

5. Finally, note that Epson's drivers are now hard to get to on their web
site.

Bottom line: it appears that the only way to get autocutting without
wasting paper is to use Print Wizard.

Regards,
....Bob Rasmussen,   President,   Rasmussen Software, Inc.

personal e-mail: ras at anzio dot com
 company e-mail: rsi at anzio dot com
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