Simulate printing in ZPL

Question 1

I'm learning ZPL from here: it's provided by Zebra Website. I think it's very helpfull.

If you want simulate the printing, you can use labelary.

Question 2

Have a look at my question and answer on PrintPage PrintPageEventHandler Is Printing Too Many Copies.

My issue was printing from a Windows Form, but you could do the same thing with Windows Mobile.

What you do is create a dummy Form with the same proportions as the document you want to print. Set labels all around with what you want them to say. Some fields will need to be INPUT fields so that your Windows Mobile app can call them and fill in those values.

For example, if you had a customer address you needed to set, the label on your dummy Form would be lblCustomerStreet, lblCustomerCity, lblCustomerState, and lblCustomerZip with public properties:

public string CustomerStreet {
  get { return lblCustomerStreet.Text; }
  set { lblCustomerStreet.Text = value; }
}

When you need to print, you make a ratio of your Form's size to the PrintDocument's Page Size. You use that ratio to either increase or decrease the size of the label so that the text fits on the page.

It does take some time to do, and there is a lot of trial and error involved.

However, the question and answer I posted up at the top will get you about 80% of the way. You would only be interested in focusing on the Document_Printed section of my code.

My example code included sizing for Panel controls, Label controls, one Image control (company logo), as well as a custom Barcode control that you can delete. The Image is printed first, then the Panels, then Labels, and finally the Barcode - because in my printout, the Barcodes are the most important, and the text on the labels is more important than the box lines made by the Panels. Panels just make your printout look pretty.