Printing Labels With Printronix T 3204 
This section explains the procedure described in
Printing Labels to create and print labels using the printer Printronix T3204.
Procedure
Creating the label: Use the design program Codesoft Pro 4.20 by Techniques Avancées to create the label layout. You can run this program under Windows 3.1, Windows 95, and Windows NT. As printer choose within Codesoft: Printronix T 3204 (PGL).
Define the printer within Codesoft with output port FILE to be able to load the print data into a file at a later time.
When defining the output format, deactivate the option Automatically adapt size. To do this, choose File ® Format
® Page.
Defining the R/3 form fields: Define all fields, which R/3 later fills with variable data, as fields with constant values, not as database fields. As field contents, use the R/3 field name. If this is not possible – for example, for certain barcodes – enter a combination of numbers which you can easily find in the print file.
If the field contents exceeds the printable area of the defined output format, the printer T 3204 shows an error message and does not print the label. Therefore, make sure that the contents of a completely filled output field still fits into the defined label. If necessary, enhance the R/3 field names (for example,
VBAK-KUNNR
) with additional characters to ensure output of a variable in its maximum length.
Selecting the fonts for text fields: For text fields, use only printer-internal fonts of the Printronix printer, no TrueType fonts.
Inserting bitmap graphics: You cannot include bitmap graphics into the label definition. During download they are converted into binary data which cannot be interpreted by SAPscript.
Downloading the label definition into the file: To transfer the printer commands to a file, choose File ® Print. Select the printer with output port FILE and choose Print. Enter a name for the print file.
Uploading the label file into SAPscript and inserting the variables: Start the SAPscript standard text editor (Utilities ® SAPscript
® Standard text). Create a new standard text. Choose Text ® Upload to upload the print file. As format select
ASCII
. Save the file.
Search for the variable fields and replace the constant text there (for example,
VBAK-KUNNR
) with the variable actually used in the print program (for example,
&VBAK-KUNNR&
). To do this, choose
Edit ® Command
® Insert command and specify the variable in the field Symbols.Adapting the SAPscript form: To print the label, adapt the desired SAPscript form. Choose Utilities ® SAPscript
® Form:
- Define the first page of the form as its own next page, since the label file in the MAIN window may be very large.
- The MAIN window should contain only one text element which contains the label file. The name of this text element depends on the R/3 application program used. To insert the label file into this text element, copy the entire text from the standard text editor into the form window.
The modifications described below are not mandatory, since the printer language Printronix PGL ignores any unknown commands and leading blanks or blank lines are no problem. However, for better readability, you should make the following changes to the form:
- Delete all windows except MAIN, or make sure that these windows don not contain any data to be printed (make them comments).
- If the print program calls any other text elements in MAIN, change their contents to comments.
- Creating an output device
: Define the Printronix printer as
Output Device in the SAP System.
The easiest way is to connect the printer to a Windows PC, install any Windows printer driver there and start the output program SAPlpd. The define the printer in the spool administration (transaction SPAD) using coupling type "S" or "U".
As device type choose
LB_PRI.