When you setup a PCL compatible printer in InterFormNG2, then you can setup these advanced PCL settings:

1. Include standard fonts
   Standard fonts like e.g. Arial, Courier and Times New Roman are included on most printers, so these fonts are normally not included in the PCL output print data stream.
   Some, few printers do however not know these fonts, so for those you should activate this option, if a wrong font is printed.
2. Fill using raster pattern
   Shaded/grey boxes are normally printed as a colored box to get a smooth, nice output. Some black/white printer cannot handle this, so for those you need to activate this option. The output may however become somewhat grainy.
3. Full color
   This option is activated as default. If active the print data stream is PCL5C (color print data), which normally is not a problem - even for black/white printers. If it is a problem, then you should deactivate this option, but the printed images may not look as nice.
4. Compress images
   If you are use very large images with InterFormNG2 e.g. very large SVG images, then the PCL data stream might get so large, that if effects the printing speed. If so, you can consider to activate the compress images option. With this option activated the printed images will be compressed. The downside is, that InterFormNG2 will use a bit more time to generate the output file.
5. Extra PCL commands
   Include extra PCL commands for this specific printer only.

With this option you can add extra PCL commands in the begining of the PCL print out from InterFormNG2. You can e.g. use this to select a specific paper drawer on the printer (e.g. to select between plain paper and preprinted paper.).

You can also consider the design element, Print settings if you want to change either values in the middle of a print out.

You can also consider to add extra PCL commands in the workflow with the components, Extra PCL commands, set paper type or Set printing properties or by setting the PCL commands as the value for the predefined variable, interform.destination.printer.pcl.pcl.

If the printer does not support selection of the drawer via the paper type, you can use an alternative command: EC&l#H, where the # is a PCL drawer number. So if you e.g. want to select PCL drawer 5 the command is: EC&l5H.

Please notice, that the PCL drawer number can range from 1 to 255 and is NOT the same number as the physical drawer on the printer and that the number depends on the exact printer model used. For some printers you even need to select drawer numbers in the range 250-255, but for most you should try values in the range 1-9.

If you want to insert multiple PCL commands, you just concatenate them into the same meta data.

Please notice, that you can use the characters ‘EC’ to denote the escape character (hex 1B), which is needed in a PCL command. (It is also possible to set the hex characters instead if needed).

Extra PJL commands

Include extra PJL commands for this specific printer only. These commands can e.g. be used for enabling/disabling color printing, stapling or include user ID and password in the print data stream.

PJL commands must start with @PJL and you can insert multiple commands in the same entry field. You can also insert dynamic PJL commands in the workflow with the workflow component, Extra PJL commands.

When you setup a ZPL compatible label printer in InterFormNG2, then you can setup these advanced ZPL settings:

The options are covered below:

1. Preview printer
   If you enable this, then the printer can be used for previewing the merged result as ZPL in the designer.
2. Start with fonts
   Tells InterFormNG to include any soft font in the start of the print data stream. That is required on some Datamax printers.
3. ZPL Prefix
   Special prefixes used in the ZPL print data stream. The values here must fit exactly with the values configured on the printer. You can verify that if you check with the printer configuration on the physical printer e.g. via a browser.

Important information

Zebra changed the firmware of the ZPL compatible printers to a new ZPL variant over 15 years ago. The ZPL output, that is generated by InterFormNG2 is the new format in which e.g. soft fonts are handled in a different manner. This means, that only printers with firmware xx.14.xx or higher supports the ZPL print data stream, that is generated by InterFormNG2.

If this is a problem, then you these options:

1. You can consider either to upgrade the firmware of the printer or to consider Driver print as the mime type instead of ZPL on the InterFormNG2. Driver print is only an option if InterFormNG2 is running on the Windows platform.
2. You can also choose to simplify the ZPL print data stream generated by InterFormNG2 with the many options mentioned below:

(The options below can also be set dynamically in the workflow via predefined variables.)

Use direct image

If selected all images are sent as direct pixelmaps instead of a PNG upload. This can be useful if the printer is unable to handle upload of png images. Potentially this can also potentially improve the performance of the printer if the connection is fast: The print data stream will become larger, but the images are easier/faster to process in the printer. If you are always printing a single label at a time, then you should consider to enable this option.

Render text as image

If selected the texts in the ZPL data stream are renders as images. This can be used as a workaround on printers, that e.g. does not support the encoding used.

Allow color images

If selected images are uploaded to the printer as color images instead of black and white. Some Epson printers supports printing of color images. (PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS IS UNTESTED, SINCE WE DON’T HAVE AN EPSON PRINTER WITH COLOR SUPPORT).

Use font identifiers

If selected then font mapping (letter as reference) is used instead of the TTF name of the font. This might increase printing speed. If used with “No font upload”, then preinstalled fonts on the printer are used - missing mappings of a font will cause a warning and a default mapping to font 0 (zero).

No font upload

This option is linked with the option, Use font identifiers above. If No font upload is enabled, then the option, Use font identifiers above should also be enabled. If you have enabled the No font upload option and not enabled Use font identifiers, then you will see the warning: "No font upload is enable and use font identifiers is disabled". In order to remove this warning you should also enable the option, Use font identifiers.

If the printer cannot handle soft fonts in the print data stream or if you want to reduce the ZPL output to an absolute minimum, then you can manually upload the soft fonts to the printer, setup a font mapping (as covered below) and then enable this option. The downside is, that you need manually to upload all the used soft fonts to the printers memory and maintain the font mapping with the workflow component, Create an upload font ZPL.

Render barcodes as images

If the printer does not support all barcodes or if e.g. the specifications of a barcode is not supported by the printer, then you can enable this option for the barcode of your choice. If you click the + icon you can enable/disable this for each barcode type.

Font mappings

In order to use the font mappings the No font upload option and the Use font identifiers option above must be enabled.

If you upload the soft fonts manually to the printer (with the workflow component, Create an upload font ZPL) , then you here need to match the used fonts with the letter, that you have used when the font was uploaded to the printer. You can click the + icon to add mappings:

You can also use the font mappings to make the printer use one of the internal, predefined fonts instead of the soft font, that is used in InterFormNG2. You can use this to reduce the size of the print data stream, that is sent to the printer. The Zebra printers has predefined fonts with the letters: A, B, D, E, F, G, H, O, GS, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V. (You can see the fonts if you search the ZPL II manual for "Standard printer fonts").

Use the built in Triumvirate font of the printer

The predefined fonts are all fixed in size - except font O, which is a scalable Triumvirate font, so if you are happy with that font, then you can map the used soft font to O like below:

You should write the font name exactly as the font file, that is installed in InterFormNG2. You should also consider which versions of the font, that you are using: You might need to upload the normal font, the bold, then italic and perhaps even bold+italic.

Tip regarding mobile printers

Customers with Zebras: Link OS Mobile printers including the iMZ Series, ZQ500 Series and QLn Series should consider the special predefined variable, interformng.zpl.includeLabelWidth to cover the label length requirement as stated here.

Example: How to reduce the ZPL print data stream by referring to uploaded fonts

For a normal installation this example should not be considered. This should only be considered if it is very important to reduce the ZPL print data stream to an absolute minimum. A large part of the ZPL print data stream is normally the soft fonts (apart from images) and it is possible to remove font uploads in the print data stream by uploading the fonts to the printer first and then refer to them in the InterFormNG2 print data stream.

You should read the points below before moving on:

Disadvantages

1. You need to upload every soft font, that you want to use to the printer. That includes all variations of the font e.g. if you want to use Arial, then you need to upload the arial.ttf font, but you also need to upload arialbd.ttf if you also want to be able use Arial bold - same for Arial italic and even Arial bold+italic.
2. You need to register each uploaded font with the correct mapping letter for each printer.
3. If you later create a print out, which refers to a font, which has not been uploaded to the printer, then the text will be written in the default font, Triumvirate (internal font 0).
4. If you change to a new printer, then you will need to upload the required fonts to the new printer.

Step 1: Upload soft fonts to the printer

The first step is to upload all the soft fonts, that you intend to use on the printer into the flash memory of the printer. That includes all variations of the font, that you intend to use including the normal, bold, italic and bold+italic. You upload the fonts with the workflow component, Create an upload font ZPL. You can at any time verify the soft fonts stored in the printer via the Directory Listing. This is done with a workflow similar to this. You should note the matching sets of Target font letter and soft fonts as you need to register each matching set on the printer configuration as well.

Step 2: Register all matching Target font letters with font files

On the advanced ZPL settings on the printer you now add font mappings for each of the soft fonts used - with the matching Target font letter used on the Create an upload font ZPL component.

You can move on to activating the change as below when this has been done.

Step 3: Activating the use of uploaded soft fonts only

When the preparations above are done, then you can move on to activating references to uploaded fonts only on the advanced ZPL printer settings. You need to set these options to change the mode for the printer:

Enable this option:

Use font identifiers

Enable this option:

No font upload

When you setup a Direct Protocol compatible label printer in InterFormNG2, then you can setup these advanced direct protocol settings:

You can increase the print speed if you load fonts and images in the printer memory. If you have done that, then you can now let InterFormNG2 know with these special settings.

1. Fonts on printer
   Fonts added here are expected to already be in the printer, so these fonts are not included in the print data stream sent from InterFormNG2.
2. Images on the printer
   The images, that are expected to already be in the printer. These are the names referred to inside of the used templates - NOT the names of the actual image files.