Printing UTF-8 characters on bluetooth printer

Question

I have an application where I should be able to print on a bluetooth printer, Zebra iMZ320, but I have some problems with UTF-8 specific characters (Æ, Ø or Å).

I am connecting to the device as follows:

        BluetoothDevice device = BluetoothAdapter.getDefaultAdapter().getRemoteDevice(macAddr);
        Method m = device.getClass().getMethod("createRfcommSocket", new Class[] { Integer.TYPE });
        bSocket = (BluetoothSocket)m.invoke(device, new Object[] { Integer.valueOf(1) });
        bSocket.connect();
        outStream = bSocket.getOutputStream();
        inStream = bSocket.getInputStream();

After the socket is open, I am sending the data in CPCL:

        String cpclData = "! U1 SETLP 5 2 24 \r\n"+text+"\r\n";
        outStream.write(cpclData.getBytes());
        outStream.flush();

But when I am trying to print the mentioned characters, it writes some abnormal characters instead.

I contacted Zebra, and one of their engineers wrote that I should try the following:

! 0 200 200 80 1 
IN-MILLIMETERS 
JOURNAL 
CENTER 
COUNTRY NORWAY
TEXT 4 0 0 8 COUNTRY IS NORWAY OR DENMARK
TEXT 4 0 0 15 Æ Ø Å
PRINT

But it does absolutely nothing.

Answer 1

Unicode isn't supported in the CPCL language. You can do it in ZPL though, and the iMZ supports ZPL. Check out this link.

Answer 2

it is simple if you try to print a label from android device; when you write the data use "ISO-8859-1" encoding, look:

String cpclData = "! U1 SETLP 5 2 24 \r\n"+text+"\r\n";
outStream.write(EncodingUtils.getBytes(cpclData, "ISO-8859-1"));
outStream.flush();

Answer 3

In my case, it worked perfectly the solution provided by @jsanmarb but using the Code page 850 (Latin-1 - Western European languages) found here: https://www.ascii-codes.com/cp850.html

Answer 4

Found this solution here

public byte[] convertExtendedAscii(String input)
{
        int length = input.length();
    byte[] retVal = newbyte[length];

    for(int i=0; i<length; i++)
    {
              char c = input.charAt(i);

              if (c < 127)
              {
                      retVal[i] = (byte)c;
              }
              else
              {
                      retVal[i] = (byte)(c - 256);
              }
    }

    return retVal;
}

Answer 5

In a similar problem, trying to print spanish special characters on a Zebra MZ220 printer via Bluetooth, finally I did the following (in this answer I add the characters Å, Æ, Ø, å, æ, ø) :

1. Define a piece of code that converts the objective string into the desired byte array:

   public class Util
   {
       public final static String  caracteresEspeciales        = "ÜüÁáÉéÍíÓóÚúÑñÅÆØåæø";
   
       public final static byte[]  codigoCaracteresEspeciales  = new byte[] {(byte) 0xDC, (byte) 0xFC, (byte) 0xC1, (byte) 0xE1, (byte) 0xC9, (byte) 0xE9,
               (byte) 0xCD, (byte) 0xED, (byte) 0xD3, (byte) 0xF3, (byte) 0xDA, (byte) 0xFA, (byte) 0xD1, (byte) 0xF1, (byte) 0xC5, (byte) 0xC6, (byte) 0xD8,
               (byte) 0xE5, (byte) 0xE6, (byte) 0xF8           };
   
       public static byte[] stringABytes(String s)
       {
           int i, l, i_especial;
           byte b;
           byte[] b_arr;
           String s_sub;
   
           if(s == null)
               return null;
           if((l= s.length()) < 1)
               return new byte[0];
   
           // convertimos a byte carácter por carácter
           b_arr= new byte[l];
           for(i= 0; i < l; i++)
           {
               s_sub= s.substring(i, i + 1);
               i_especial= Util.caracteresEspeciales.indexOf(s_sub);
               if(i_especial < 0)
                   b= (s_sub.getBytes())[0];
               else
                   b= Util.codigoCaracteresEspeciales[i_especial];
               b_arr[i]= b;
           }
   
           return b_arr;
       }
   }
   

Those hexadecimal codes we can get them from PROMAN-CPCL document that coming whith the printer (APPENDIX C- CHARACTER TABLES, Latin 1 Character Set table).

2. Convert the string and send it.

           String datos_cplc;
           byte[] b_arr;
           ...
           datos_cplc= "! 0 200 200 48 1\r\n" + 
                   "TEXT 7 0 0 0 12345678901234567890123456789012\r\n" + 
                   "TEXT 7 0 0 25 ÜüÁáÉéÍíÓóÚúÑñÅÆØåæø AEIOUaeiou1\r\n" + 
                   "FORM\r\n" + 
                   "PRINT\r\n";
           b_arr= Util.stringABytes(datos_cplc);
           ...
           connection.write(b_arr);
   

3. The result: