[Printing-architecture] Announcing LPrint - A Label Printing Application

[Printing-architecture] Announcing LPrint - A Label Printing Application

[Michael Sweet]

All,

I've put together a label printer application called LPrint for macOS® and Linux®.  I wrote it in response to criticism that coming changes in CUPS will leave users of label printers in the cold...  The project home page is at:

	https://www.msweet.org/lprint

Basically, LPrint is a print spooler optimized for label printing.  It accepts "raw" print data as well as PNG images (like those used for shipping labels by most shippers' current web APIs) and has built-in "drivers" to send the print data to USB and network-connected label printers.  The spooler also tries to keep the labels moving by merging jobs over a single connection to the printer rather than starting and stopping like CUPS does to support a wider variety of printers.

LPrint supports the full range of options and features supported by the embedded drivers - currently all Dymo and Zebra ZPL label printers.  Whenever possible, LPrint will auto-detect the make and model of your printer and its installed capabilities.  And you can configure the default values of all options as well as manually configure the media that is loaded in each printer.

LPrint also offers a simple network server mode that makes any label printers appear as IPP Everywhere™/AirPrint™ printers on your network.  Thus, any macOS, iOS®, or Linux client can use any label printer supported by LPrint.  And you can, of course, send jobs from LPrint to an LPrint server on the network.

Finally, LPrint offers command-line and web-based monitoring of printer and job status.

I plan on doing a 1.0 beta release very soon.  Enjoy!

________________________
Michael Sweet