Printers

Printers

This section concerns printers for a tenant.

For a normal setup you need to configure all printers before you can use them in the InterFormNG2 workflow e.g. for the Print component. This is covered below.

If you however have a license for InterFormNG2, that supports an unlimited number of printers, then you can also print to an unregistered printer.

In order to setup the printers, you first need to sign in as described here.

 

Then you click Settings and General Settings in the top followed by Printers on the left:



 

Then you see the list of printers already registered as below:



Printer groups are shown with a darker gray background. For reference the line, Zebra printers above is a printer group. Printers inside the group (if visible) are shown with a dark gray box as the Zebra1 printer above. 

You can collapse/expand the printer groups to see or hide the printers in the group in these manners:

If you click this icon: , then all printer groups are collapsed and printers in all groups are hidden. When all printer groups are collapsed the same spot shows this icon: , which expands all printer groups and all printers in groups are shown.

You can also expand/collapse individual printer groups with the arrow icon to the right of the printer group:


With the filter icon:

You can decide if the printer groups should be shown first or list in the printer list.

 

Search for printer

You can subset the list of printers in the overview above by typing in a text in the search field. InterFormNG2 will immediately subset the list of the printer to the ones, that contains the text, that you have typed in. Below only printers containing the text zebra are shown:



 

Add a new printer

From the list above you can e.g. choose to define a new printer, if you press the Add printer icon.

Then a pop-up window is shown where you are prompted for the configuration of the new printer:



When the printer is fully defined you click Save on the bottom right to save the changes.

  

Delete a printer

If you want to delete the printer you simply click the trashcan icon to the very right of the printer in the printer list:


You need to confirm the delete on the pop-up window:

 

Printer connection options

In the top of the printer configuration you define, how the printer is connected. This is covered in this section.

You cannot change the connection option of a printer, so if you need to change it, then you might need to delete the printer and recreate it with the new connection option.


Info
Notice, that you can also specify, that the printer is connected via a remote client.

Name

The name you write here is the name of the printer for InterFormNG2. This can be different from the system printer name, if you e.g. want to substitute a printer.

 

Mime type

This selects the printer language of the print data stream, that is sent to the printer. You need to ensure, that the printer supports the printer language, that you select here.

The possible values are:

Mime type
Description

PCL

Select this for PCL5e/PCL5c compatible printers (most laser printers).

PCL6
Select this for PCL6 compatible printers (most laser printers).

ZPL

Select this for most Zebra label printers. It is also recommended for many other ZPLII compatible label printers.

Direct protocol

For Intermec printers, that are compatible with the Direct Protocol printer language. ZPLII might also be a (better) alternative.

PDF

Sends PDF to the printer. This require, that the printer is PDF compatible. The quality of the printed output depends on the conversion of the PDF within the printer.

Driver print

Prints via the local printer driver.  You should normally use this only if none of the above can be used. It is only possible to use this for system printers. This is not supported on all platforms. You can e.g. not use it on the IBM i platform.

The Driver print option is very limited compared with the specific print data streams like PCL, ZPL and Direct Protocol:

The driver print is using the settings of the driver and settings and e.g. tray selection can only be done in the driver.

The printed quality may not be as good as when printing PCL/ZPL or Direct Protocol as it can be affected by the driver.

You may e.g. experience, that lines are printed in another thickness than specified in InterFormNG2.

 

DPI/Resolution

The resolution of the printer. This setting is ignored for PCL printing. For PCL, Driverprint and PDF output the DPI setting on the template element is used instead.  For label printers (ZPL and Direct protocol) it is very important, that you select a resolution/DPI on the printer, that match the resolution of the physical printer head.

 

Advanced Settings

Depending on the type of mime type (the printer language, that is to be used for the specific printer), some special mime type advanced settings can be setup.


Add a group
You can add a new group with this icon:

Now a pop-up window will ask you to write the group name, location and a description:
Just fill out the fields and click Save to create the new group.

Assign a group to a printer
If you want to assign a printer to a group, then you simply edit the printer with this icon to the right of the printer on the list:

Then the printer settings are shown in the bottom of the screen, where you can select an existing group in this drop down list:
Click Save to save the change.

Delete a group
If you want to delete a group, then you just click the trashcan icon to the right of the printer group. Any printer in the deleted group are not deleted, but the group reference on these printers are removed.



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