Hello Craig, On Sat, 2012-04-07 at 15:12 +1000, Craig Sanders wrote:
can anyone recommend a decent reasonably-priced small label printer that works well with linux and standard text-processing tools.
I am doing labels for jam jars for someone else, albeit all the same on a sheet, using Postscript.
powered from the USB interface would be nice but not essential. multiple suppliers of consumables would also be nice but, i guess, unlikey.
There are "portable" inkjet printers, at a price, not forgetting the running costs.
i want to print some labels to put on stuff. like disk identifiers to stick on the handles of my hot-swap bays. nothing fancy, just needs to do a simple job, do it well, and not cost too much per label.
If you are prepared to do a full sheet of Avery or similar labels in a print run, then play with Postscript.
if anyone has any tricks for controlling them from the command line (rather than openoffice or some gui label-printing app), i'd love to hear about it.
e.g. in the first instance, I want to print sticky lables based on the output of:
$ /bin/ls /dev/disk/by-id/| sed -rne '/ata-(ST|WDC)/s/ata-.*_//p' | grep -v -- -part 6VP3FWAG 9VP16X03 9VP18CCV 9VP4P4LN 9VP4RPXK 9VP509T5 WD-WCASJ2114122 WD-WCASJ2195141 WD-WMAV50817803 WD-WMAV50933036
From what I have seen of your competence, you are more than capable of knocking up a script to put it into a Postscript template. Postscript can be a bugger first up, but competence with an RPN calculator can be a big help.
i also want to be able to print once-off labels with something as simple as 'echo text | lpr -Plabelprinter'
I have seen those "little" label printers, but not necessarily cheap.
craig
Regards, Mark Trickett