how to connect openerp with fiscal printer

Question

I have installed OpenERP 6.1 software and now i want to connect it to a fiscal printer. There are some files I got from the vendor of the fiscal printer which are .dll files. The fiscal printer should communicate through the serial port. As per the vendor these files should be incorporated in the source code of the program one is building. These files are .net files. Is there any way the program should communicate with the fiscal printer without using those .dll files?

Any idea on how to integrate the printer and the program will be highly appreciated.

Answer 1

Depending on what you want to print on that printer, you could try the following:

• Write a .NET service that monitors a directory for text files. When a file is written to the directory, print its contents and delete the file. Then make OpenERP write files into that directory when you want to print something.
• Use some interop tools to communicate directly from Python to .NET. I haven't used it, but Python for .NET sounds promising. You could also try some COM interop and write a wrapper for those libraries that exposes them via COM.
• Figure out what the actual interface is for the printer, and write to the serial port from Python.
• Configure the printer as a regular Windows printer, and then print the regular PDFs that OpenERP generates for reports. I'm not sure whether that's possible with your printer.