[cups.general] Font identifying from raster

[Michael R Sweet]

shermin wrote:
> Hi,
> 
>  1) If i write the data for magnetic encoding in a text file,can I get those values in Page header using cupsString????

An ordinary text file won't work.  You'd need to include some sort
of header so that CUPS could identify it as a special format instead.

> 2)Also Why to write the application for generating postscript file

To insert your magstrip data, for example the following PostScript
code will put the string "867-5309" in the cupsString1 attribute of
the page header:

     <</cupsString1(867-5309)>>setpagedevice

> 3)How it will be linked to the cups Flow???

If you implement it as a filter in CUPS (using your own .types and
..convs files in /etc/cups), then your program will be run as a
filter.

If you implement it as a standalone application, then your program's
output needs to be sent to CUPS; for a simple application that writes
a PostScript file to stdout:

     yourprogram options "867-5309" ... | lp -d yourprinter

BUT REMEMBER - this is only needed to support printing with older
versions of CUPS.  CUPS 1.2 and higher support custom string options
so you could just do:

     lp -d yourprinter -o MagStrip=Custom.867-5309 filename

to get the printer commands embedded by the standard PostScript
filter.  An example of this is included in the CUPS sources and
documentation (http://www.cups.org/documentation.php/spec-ppd.html).

> 
> 
> Shermin
> 
> 
>> shermin wrote:
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> I am writing the code for Magnetic encoding for my smart card
>>> printers.I am using a special font for this.I thought of identifying
>>> the special font for magnetic encoding so that whenever that font is
>>> found in a job file ,it should be gone for magnetic encoding rather
>>> than printing blankly.So is there any method to identify the font
>>> from the raster data.If not ,how can be this achieved.???
>> You can't recover the text from raster data.
>>
>> That said, I'd use a page attribute (cupsString1 through
>> cupsString16 are available, each supporting up to 63 characters + nul)
>> to pass the string(s) for the mag strip.  A custom option can be used
>> to set the value, and/or you can write a small application that
>> creates a PostScript file containing the image for the card and the
>> string(s) for the mag strip.
>>
>> --
>> ______________________________________________________________________
>> Michael Sweet, Easy Software Products           mike at easysw dot com
> 
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-- 
______________________________________________________________________
Michael R Sweet                        Senior Printing System Engineer