Question

I am developing a software which require to print receipts.

What is the most common type of receipt printer?

Are there any industry standards for receipt printer API?

Are there any .net library for that? Tried to find but didn't find anything.

Was it helpful?

Solution

UnifiedPOS is the most common API today for communicating with Point-Of-Sale peripherals including receipt printers: http://www.nrf-arts.org/UnifiedPOS/default.htm.

Microsoft have an implementation for .NET: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms828083.aspx.

UnifiedPOS evolved from OPOS (OLE for Retail POS), so google for OPOS for more info. You will find more peripheral manufacturers support OPOS than other flavors of UnifiedPOS. Microsoft's POS for .NET will work with OPOS V1.8 Service objects.

OTHER TIPS

Epson has a system that's pretty standard.

Zebra is another big player.

When searching google for additional help, you probably want to be looking for a "pos printer", rather than a "receipt printer", where POS stands for "Point of Sale". You'll get more better hits that way.

There is a Zebra project at CodePlex that I use for printing labels

http://www.codeplex.com/sharpzebra

I've used Zebra printers in the past. I'm not sure about an API for creating new documents on the fly but you can use their designer to build the "document" and fill & print dynamically. Their software was OK but we found BarTender to work a little better for our implementation.

Zebra also has a Zebra Programming Language (ZPL) that was actually kind of fun to use (the Windows driver was very poor 2 years ago). The documentation was pretty good and it was pretty easy to pick up. I went threw several spools trying to get everything right. :-)

Try jzebra if you are ok with a java solution: http://code.google.com/p/jzebra

Star Micronics, I see a lot of them out in the wild; never used them but with native Windows printer drivers I would assume it's pretty simple to work with.

Verifone (a large POS and pin-pad manufacturer) also has a couple of printer models.

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