Forcing html and css to size?

randomanon

So im still coding on my project and is in the need of forcing the css to a size so i can print labels.

Its a function that allows to print labels with the owners name + phone and IDnumber, the size in question for printing is 38x90mm or 143px x 340px the model is known as QL-570 from Brother.

I've tried with Fpdf ( Also the label script from Fpdf's site ), it didnt force the size into what i wanted but instead gave me whole A4-paper sized labels.. cant use that really.

I also tried with margin 0 x padding 0 to force it into the corner and give it the pixel size as stated before.

So what can i do now?

Bonesnap

Just FYI, you can't directly convert pixels to inches, millimetres, centimetres, etc. It doesn't work like that.

Why not put the labels inside a div tag and specify its dimensions?

traq

if you're printing on a label sheet (i.e., self-adhesive, pre-cut labels), then you're going to need an accurate template.

Generating a PDF is probably still your best option, but you're going to have quite a task in front of you getting the dimensions and positioning right - you won't be able to simply use the default options of whatever PDF converter you decide to use.

The alternative would be to make a print stylesheet for your labels, and use physical dimensions (cm, etc.). I don't know how reliable that would be, with browsers and OS's all competing for control of the printer (thinking of the margins/gutter in particular).

randomanon;11000770 wrote:
... the size in question for printing is 38x90mm or 143px x 340px the model is known as QL-570 from Brother.

As Bonesnap mentioned, px and mm are completely different and you can't determine one value based on the other. 143px x 340px can be printed at 14mm x 34mm just as easily as 2860mm x 6800mm (assuming you have a printer that big).

Question: since you know what printer you're using, it would stand to reason that this is for a very narrow deployment: why are you using PHP? Isn't there some sort of software that came with the printer? Or even just a template for a regular word processing program?

randomanon

traq;11000834 wrote:
why are you using PHP? Isn't there some sort of software that came with the printer? Or even just a template for a regular word processing program?

Its a function that allows to print labels with the owners name + phone and IDnumber

I'm gonna call from a database, so when you press the function, lets call it label.php then it will output the person etc on a forced div tag, but i've already tried that also.
I only need to find out how to force it into the size of the labelprinter.

I tried with body padding x margin 0px, and created a div tag for it called label body and forced it to the corner with same options, gave it a 143px x 340px and such, but still it refused to print on this option, i tried with FPDF like said and it gave me a A4-paper instead which i cant use since i only want ONE label and not 40 of it.

traq

As I said, you're not going to be able to just use default options of whatever class you choose.

In fPDF, you can create custom page sizes by passing an array with the width and height (I can't link to this documentation because the fPDF website uses frames ::grumble grumble:: )

You might be better off learning about PHP's PDF functions. As you can see just from the length of the function list, it's pretty involved. This isn't a quick answer, but I suspect there is not a quick solution in php.

I would still say php is the wrong solution, however. This is a desktop problem: it needs a desktop solution.

jeepin81

As traq explained there is a lot more that goes into it... You can't just take some HTML and throw it at those thermal printers and think it's going to look the same...

We print to some thermal Zebra printers and we use supplied API's from USPS, UPS and Zebra that gives us binary that in turn is a PDF we print out of those printers.

I would look into some base64_decode options, check w/ brother for an API or something along those lines. It can be pretty tricky.

I would even do a google search for "PHP Label Printing"... There are some good classes you can take advantage of.