CODEWITHSUNDEEP
printingzebra-printerszplbarcode-printing
Stee
Stee

Reputation: 223

Make text in ZPL label bold or underlined?

Due to a new EU law every food packaging label has to outline possible allergy-causing ingredients by either styling them bold or underlined in the ingredients list.

Currently I'm printing my labels via ZPL to zebra printers. I checked the ZPL manuel 1 & 2 and didn't find way how to print something in bold or underlined. Is there any way to do this?

Example: "Ingredients: water, sugar, milk, cheese, chocolate"

SHOULD BE NOW: "Ingredients: water, sugar, milk, cheese, chocolate"

My current label code for the ingredients is:

^CF0,15
^FO13,245
^FB530,2,,L,
^FH^FD__VAR_INGREDIENTS__
^FS

Thank you very much for your help,

Stefan

Upvotes: 19

Views: 36079

Answers (3)

Meloman
Meloman

Reputation: 3712

Based on @raphioly-san I decided to increase the font-size to get font-weight bold/bolder equivalent.

for the following javascript object and functions, I achieve the desired result on Node-RED app :


    const element = { 
        type: 'text', 
        content: 'Article: 1001779', 
        x: 5, // horizontal position from left border
        y: 5, // vertical position from top border
        font_size: 6, // font size in pixels
        font_weight: 'bold', // can be 'bold', 'bolder' or remove line for 'normal'
    };
    
    const margin = 2; // for 2mm margins

    return {
        ...msg
        payload: generateZPLText(element, margin)
    };

    function mmToPoints(mm, margin) {
        return Math.abs( (mm + margin) / 10 * 72);
    }

    function generateZPLText(element, margin) {
        const x_points = mmToPoints(element.x, margin);
        const y_points = mmToPoints(element.y, margin);
        const fontSize = element.font_size ? element.font_size * 4 : 20;
        
        if(element.font_weight) {
            if(element.font_weight == 'bolder') {
                const fontWidth = Math.abs( (fontSize + 5) * 4 );
            }
            else if(element.font_weight == 'bold') {
                const fontWidth = Math.abs( (fontSize + 3) * 4 );
            }
            else {
                const fontWidth = Math.abs( fontSize * 4 );
            }
        }
    
        return `^FO${x_points},${y_points}^A0N,${fontSize},${fontWidth}^FD${element.content}^FS`;
    }

Upvotes: 0

Raphioly-San
Raphioly-San

Reputation: 404

You could also try and make the font width grow a little:

^A0N,18,20

"^A" starts the font setting, where "0" is the embedded font, "N" the rotation, "18" the height and "20" the font width. The last one is 10 by default. So you're actually making the font wider, which results in a form of bold...

It may not affect the lines that are printed horizontally, but you will get a sense of bold.

(I know it's an 'old' topic, but I just wanted to share)

Upvotes: 9

Magoo
Magoo

Reputation: 79982

To underline - use a monospaced font like AA,AC,AD,AF or AG

Use 

^FO350,50^AGR^FDwhatever,milk,butter,salt^FS
^FO340,50^AGR^FD         ____ ______^FS

where the underline here is under milk and butter, you can adjust the offset by trimming the FO's X and Y positions by a few dots (10 X here)

On further investigation, I found

To bold

Use an old dot-matrix-printer trick. Still using fixed-pitch font, reprint the text but replacing the non-bold characters with spaces and adjust the X-position by 1 or 2 dots, reprint again with the Y-position adjusted by 1 o2 2 dots.

^FO350,50^AGR^FDwhatever,milk,butter,salt^FS
^FO348,50^AGR^FD         milk butter^FS
^FO350,52^AGR^FD         milk butter^FS

To underline, draw a graphics box below the required letters. This is relatively easy to calculate since the width of each letter is constant.

^FO345,490^GB0,160,4^FS
^FO345,690^GB0,240,4^FS

I tested using an A300 and 8"*3" labels, so I needed to rotate the text, hence some odd calculations. The manual does not show the ^FS, even in the examples but I found it was required.

Upvotes: 33

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