All,

Does anyone have an AREV routine that can convert a US zip code to a US Post Office Postnet Bar code and send it to a printer?

I tried this using graphics, see postings below. It doesn't seem to work, probably because ascii characters are needed to communicate with the printer and these characters are probably used by AREV to do its thing.

Thanks,

Dale Walker

dale_walker@integrity.com

Hi Dale,

We just use softfonts which we download to the printer and activate upon printing. Some printers even have the Postnet barcode built in (I believe the HP4050 does.)

Are you also aware that there other issues involved with printing a correctly formatted Postnet barcode? For instance, Postnet requires a starting and ending parenthesis and a checksum. If you are planning on doing bulk mailing then you will also need the Optional Endorsement Line and Carrier Route.

dbakke@srpcs.com

SRP Computer Solutions, Inc.

Don,

I appreciate your response to this plea for help. I am using an old Epson lq-1010 (Wide carriage LQ-800). I was hoping to be able to print to disk so I could email labels to the appropriate people for printing. I am just seeing if it could be done and what the issues are that are involved.

Since you brought up the issue of softfonts. How does arev handle them. I assume that each printer is different and each printer manufacturer has its own esc sequences.

I noticed that there are 12 digits in the bar code with a tall bar on each end. If you will note in my previous missive that my routine takes this into account. I take it that the 12th digit is the check sum. I take it that the 10th and 11th is the carrier route. I take it that the post office has a postnet code for all this information.

If you could respond to the issue of ascii characters being sent to the printer from arev, I would appreciate some clarity.

Thanks,

Dale

ps. I wish I could go to Las Vegas, but that is not in the cards.

Dale,

This may sound "cute", but you simply print what you want. AREV doesn't intercept them or reserve them in any way. Ascii character 65 is uppercase A.

PRINTER ON

PRINT CHAR(65)

PRINTER OFF

Prints an uppercase A to your printer from AREV.

PRINTER ON

PRINT "A"

PRINTER OFF

Prints an uppercase A to your printer from AREV.

PRINTER ON

PRINT \41\

PRINTER OFF

Prints an uppercase A to your printer from AREV.

Say you want a formfeed (page eject from your printer). You can't see it - it's an escape code.

PRINTER ON

PRINT CHAR(12)

PRINTER OFF

Each AREV print statement completes by sending a carriage return line feed to the printer. To suppress this, we use a trailing colon to force concatenation between strings on separate lines of your RBASIC program.

PRINTER ON

PRINT "A"

PRINT "B":

PRINT "C"

PRINTER OFF

But if you are printing labels you'll most likely need to alternate between switching your printer into graphics mode (for the postal codes), and back into text mode (for the address stuff). There are escape codes (which are merely a series of characters starting with char(27) followed by some other characters which the printer accepts as an instruction to change a setting and not print anything visible)

What we sometimes do is switch the printer off then on. Then from TCL we use an eval statement to test the codes (all on one TCL line):

EVAL PRINTER ON ; PRINT CHAR(65) ; PRINT CHAR(99) ;

PRINT CHAR(27):CHAR(52):"ABC" ; PRINTER OFF

This is often faster than compiling then running your program. Every time the printer doesn't respond as you expect, turn it off for five seconds then on again. Then modify your program and re-run.

The Sprezzatura Group

World Leaders in all things RevSoft

Dale,

Not sure if this is what you want, but to send printer escape code sequence in AREV, I do the following.

For example:

NORMAL% =\12\ ;* CANCEL COMPRESS

Compress$=Char(15)

TOP.PAGE% = \0C\

BOLD% = CHAR(27):CHAR(69)

CANCEL.BOLD% = CHAR(27):CHAR(70)

UNDERLINE% = CHAR(27):CHAR(45):CHAR(1)

CANCEL.UNDERLINE%= CHAR(27):CHAR(45):CHAR(0)

PRINTER ON

* this puts the printer into Compress Mode

Print Compress$

Print "This is compress"

* this puts printer back to normal.

Print Normal%

* this does a form feed.

Print Top.Page$

Hope this help, and good luck,

Ray

There are a number of routines available for various windows languages that will print postnet codes. From Arev, I choose the route of going to ASCII or dBeast and then using other programs to print. For bulk mail, you need a specialized, CASS certified program.

Dale,

I appreciate your response to this plea for help. I am using an old Epson lq-1010 (Wide carriage LQ-800). I was hoping to be able to print to disk so I could email labels to the appropriate people for printing. I am just seeing if it could be done and what the issues are that are involved.

Okay, what exactly do these "appropriate people" want from you? If they simply want the raw zipcode information then you shouldn't need to worry about the postnet stuff because they will take care of that. If anything, you should only need to provide them the additional characters that makes a complete postnet barcode (for example: "(928704)" are the ASCII characters needed to correctly print a Postnet code for 92870.)

If these people are expecting a printer ready file then you would have to be creating a file that is designed for their printers. Most likely they are using a laser printer but you said you have an Epson LQ-1010. Something isn't making sense to me here.

Since you brought up the issue of softfonts. How does arev handle them. I assume that each printer is different and each printer manufacturer has its own esc sequences.

Softfonts are usually designed for HP compatable printers that are capable of having them downloaded. Alternatively, some printers accept font cartridges which accomplish the same thing. Finally, all HP compatable printers have some fonts built-in, and sometimes this includes the Postnet barcode. Regardless of how the font gets into the printer, AREV only needs to send the appropriate ESC/Ascii sequence to tell the printer to use that font. This specific sequence will vary depending on how the font was installed onto the printer.

Afterwards, you would just print the simple ASCII string (i.e. "(928704)") and the printer substitutes the appropriate barcode font for each character. Voila! When you are done printing you would then switch back to a human readable font, like Helvetica or Courier.

I noticed that there are 12 digits in the bar code with a tall bar on each end. If you will note in my previous missive that my routine takes this into account.

I didn't catch your "previous missive". Your first post in this chain mentions something "below" but I didn't know what that referred to.

I take it that the 12th digit is the check sum. I take it that the 10th and 11th is the carrier route. I take it that the post office has a postnet code for all this information.

The first digit is a "(" and the last digit is a ")". The second to the last digit is the checksum. Anything in between is the 5 or 9-digit zipcode. The carrier route and optional endorsement lines are what appear (usually) above the entire address. You'll see several astericks and the word "AUTO" in it. This is used for bulk mailing. As Curt Putnam mentioned, you would need a CASS certified software package to generate this information for you. Pitney Bowes has a package called SmartMailer that does this very thing.

If you could respond to the issue of ascii characters being sent to the printer from arev, I would appreciate some clarity.

If you were doing the printing you could take the softfont approach (which is far easier) or attempt to print the barcode yourself by using the graphics ability of the specific printer you are working on. Doing this usually involves relatively complicated ESC sequence code which is why the softfonts is a much better route (assuming softfonts are an option. Usually not the case with dot-matrix printers.) I believe someone has posted some R/Basic routines to print some types of barcodes but I don't recall what printers this logic support.

I don't know if this made things more or less clear. I think we can nail this down after you explain what your printers need to get from you.

ps. I wish I could go to Las Vegas, but that is not in the cards

I'm sorry to hear that. Too bad you are also too far away to attend our recently developed Southern California Revelation User's Group.

dbakke@srpcs.com

SRP Computer Solutions, Inc.

Don,

The "appropriate peoplw" refers to the family organizations that would handle the actual mailing. For example, the John Walker(1785) Family Organization has 4000+ addresses and the Henry Hendricks(1730) Family has about the same. The idea would be to provide support for both.

I like the idea of softfonts, I had overlooked that.

My previous missive is a topic that was posted several days ago.

Just one more question, Where would I get a CASS package?

I appreciate the help that you have given me.

Dale

ps. The issue concerning the User conference is not the distance since LV is half way between LA and SLC.

Dale,

Just one more question, Where would I get a CASS package?

The only one I've worked with is SmartMailer from Pitney Bowes. I believe you can order (actually, subscribe) from them. It's a subscription because the US Post Office updates their database regularly. Pitney Bowes sends out a new package of CD's every quarter.

Perhaps Curt knows of another package. You might even do a search on the internet.

dbakke@srpcs.com

SRP Computer Solutions, Inc.

I use Mailers+4 from Melissa Data

Melissa Data

970 Calle Negocio

San Clemente, CA 92767-3620

800-800-6245

]This may sound "cute", but you simply print what you want. AREV ]doesn't intercept them or reserve them in any way. Ascii character ]65 is uppercase A.

]PRINTER ON

]PRINT CHAR(65)

]PRINTER OFF

Careful! Especially when debugging printer codes, we need to be mindful of implied carriage return line feeds which will send extra data. The code above sends the letter "A" followed by carriage return line feed characters. To omit these, the colon (:) character must be appended to the end of the second line thus:

PRINTER ON

PRINT CHAR(65):

PRINTER OFF

Failing such a detail could potentially totally screw up bar code rendering.

Thanks Curt,

I will contact them.

Dale

The phone number is good; the address is old. Current address is:

Melissa Data

22382 Avenida Empressa

Rancho Santa Margarita, CA 92688-2112

Victor,

Good point. The use of colons was mentioned after the initial examples you cite. The colons don't show up too well here, so it's easy to miss.

The Sprezzatura Group

World Leaders in all things RevSoft

I see that now. Somehow I missed the comment the first time round.

There are dozens of off-the-self packages that do this. No sense in reinventing the wheel and having to worry about updates because you can get periodic updates for rates and code changes.

All packages should allow you to import data from OI/ARev.

Try http://www.smartsoftusa.com/ or http://www.g1.com

or do a web search on "arclist" and you'll find dozens of like software.

Arclist was the 'choice' DOS package for list management and mailing. Unfortunately the last version is not Y2K compliant.

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