Printers

Kalipso - Developing - Printers

Kalipso allows you to build your own Reports and print them in a wide range of printers. To do that, you must create a Printer in your Project. Please read the following page to familiarize with the printing feature in Kalipso.

To access the printers to be associated with the project, in the main menu, click Project and then Printers. There the following screen appears:

Options:

• Add - Add new Printer definition.

• Edit - Modify an existing Printer definition.

• Copy - Copy an existing Printer definition.

• Paste - Paste an existing Printer definition.

• Delete - Delete an existing Printer definition.

Add/Edit

When you click on add or edit a printer, the following screen appears:

The window appears divided into two tabs:

Tab - General

• Name - Name to identify the Printer inside your Project.

• Printer - Printer type. Select by language or brand, accordingly to your manufacturer's definitions. The selected Printer might be managed by Kalipso or PrinterCE.

• Communication Type - Type of communication between the mobile device and the printer. It can be one of the following:

  • Bluetooth Socket - Use this option to connect to a bluetooth printer using the MAC address. Note that the printer must have the Serial Port Service available, also known as SPP - Serial Port Profile.

  • Bluetooth Virtual COM - On Windows, if you have a bluetooth printer mapped to a COM port, you can use this option.

  • Cable - Standard Serial Port communication. Even if your communication is Bluetooth, choose this type of communication for it should be a standard Serial Port communication.

  • Irda - Infrared communication.

  • TCP/IP - Standard TCP/IP communication. Use this type for network printers, like WIFI or Ethernet.

• Printer Description - Personal description of the Printer.

• Max. Image Size (bytes) - Indicates the maximum size for the image in bytes. Enter 0 to have no limit.

• Image Command Variant - ESC/P printers have small variants on how to send images using the image command. This option is only visible and configurable when a Graphic ESC/P or Native ESC/P printer is selected, so you switch between 2 possible variants to adapt to existing printer implementation. Normally this is by trial and error, since printers do not have this documented, so, normally, you can try with the option "Image Variant 1 (ESC * with Paper feed)" and if it does not print correctly, you can try to change to "Image Variant 2 (ESC * with Line Spacing)".

The available printer types are (sorted alphabetically):

• ACLAS A01X

• BMP

• Canon GT10 - (Depecrated)

• Casio IT3000

• Generic Text PrinterCE

• Generic Text

• GIF

• Graphic APEX

• Graphic Brother RJ 4030/4040

• Graphic ESC/ P 203

• Graphic ESCP2 203

• Graphic HP PCL

• Graphic TSC TSPL

• Graphic Woosim Esc/ P 203

• Graphic Zebra CPL

• Graphic Zebra EPL

• Graphic Zebra ZPL

• JPG

• Native Driver

• Native ESC/P

• Native IP3000

• PCX

• PDF

• Pidion BIP-1300

• Skeye POS

• Star Azura

• Text DOTH 100

• Zebra CPL

• Zebra EPL (Deprecated)

• Zebra ZPL

The PrCE driver is only available for Windows Mobile and CE. If the selected Printer requires the usage of PrinterCE, Kalipso will warn you and you'll have to install PrinterCE SDK manually. PrinterCE SDK is available for installation in the Kalipso folder on the PDA, upon setup. You must also license your PrinterCE SDK. Visit www.fieldsoftware.com for more information.

Tab - Details

• MAC Address - MAC Address of the printer.

• Time Wait (ms) - Time to wait, in milliseconds, after sending all the data to the Printer, and before closing the communication Port. This parameter should only be used if the Printer stops printing when the communication Port is closed even if there's data still in the buffer.

For PDF Printer on Android you can use SetPrinterParameter to specify the Server as "Legacy"

In this case Android will use same PDF library as the simulator that although it has more limitations mainly related to fonts file usage, it outputs smaller PDF files.