Label design with a PC program

You use an external PC program (Windows design program) to create the label for the required printer. The complete layout of the label and the required fields that the SAP system later fills with data are defined using this program.

Downloading the print data

The design program must allow the download of the print file that is normally sent to the printer. This file contains the printer commands used for printing the label on the special printer. Only the current variable values need to be replaced later on.

Uploading the print file into a SAPscript form

The print file that was just created is uploaded into a SAPscript form. For this purpose, the system uses the upload function available in the SAPscript editor, uploads the file, for example, into the standard text editor (Transaction SO10), and then copies the file using the standard text copy functions into the MAIN window of the SAPscript form to be used. The format of the file to be uploaded must be "ASCII", that is, it can only contain printable characters as well as carriage return, linefeed, and possibly also form feed. In addition, the file must not contain more than 80 characters per line, since otherwise inappropriate new lines will be created during the upload.

Inserting SAPscript variables into the print file

You must now enter variables of the print program (program symbols) in the SAPscript form in those places where variable data is to appear in the label. These variables are supplied at runtime with the current field values from the application program.

Adapting the form

With most label printers, the SAPscript form must also be adapted, that is, the MAIN window must be enlarged to the complete page size and all other windows must be deleted. Also, the MAIN window should, in most cases, only contain a single text element, namely the text just uploaded with the printer commands. To reduce new line breaks to a minimum, you can set the script type in the form header to COURIER 6 point.

Creating/uploading a suitable device type

As a rule, you must use a special device type (a variant of the device type ASCIIPRI) to ensure that the form will be printed correctly on a label printer. For the examples explained below, SAP will provide these device types and will also deliver them in the SAP standard system. To test the procedure with other label printers, you can normally use the device type ASCIIPRI.

Definition of an output device

As a last step, you must call up transaction SPAD to set up an output device (printer) in the SAP system to which the special device type or ASCIIPRI is assigned. The application program must now use this output device to print out the labels. The label printer itself is connected up to the SAP system using one of the standard available connection types in the SAP system (local print to application server / remote print via Ipd server / remote print via Windows PC and SAPIpd/Frontend print).