Rupee the dotted problem of Print
Unsung problem | How far to go for experience | The PM journey | Design your character to print | Dot-matrix legacy printer
Rupee symbol has come into existence in India in the year 2012. You can see Rupee symbol ₹ introduction as another Unicode character, or as a standardization or as a functional decision. It has a lot more impact on the printing, currency started printing with the new symbol.
A large impact was also on Dotmatrix printers !
Instance, which has provoked me to dig the problem. Tried to understand & relate as a Product Manager how far will you go to resolve these problems.
On a regular buy of medicines, a pharmacy store agent has handed over a bill printed in a Dotmatrix printer. It was only a discussion which started to recheck the amount & triggered as I screened the bill where is the symbol of Rupee on the bill.
Further kept track of all the bills, food delivery, Grocery bills, it was to my amusement that in major cases bills are with out a Rupee symbol.
Aha! Where is the Rupee symbol ? :)
It even lingered, whether am I amused or a flabbergast. Is it a large problem to even think off or trying to “Count the stars”.
As you bore more, you get more oil
Started journey with a simple question to be answered “ Why ?”. Is it not possible — Never solved before — Is it required to be solved — How big is the problem.
Now you google to find answers & it was evident to me no one solved it before. Hence the inspiration, How good will it be if you solve a problem which now one else solved.
Pretext, Dotmatrix printers treated as the legacy printer, but the methodology of Dotmatrix printing methodology is being used in many printers like thermal printers. The limitation of Dotmatrix printers are most of them doesn’t support the Unicode characters, hence the rupee symbol is not supported.
Since Dotmatrix printers only ASCII characters, printing a Unicode character becomes a tricky one.
Printers has a capability to print User defined characters
So, what does this imply. You can design & define a character & print. EPSON has a PML Printer Management Language, usually known as Escape sequence printing. It gives a capability to print an user defined characters in a printer.
Design
Designed the rupee symbol to fit in 9 pin matrix. Similarly you can design multiple characters & print on dotmatrix.
Resources
- Printer : 9 pin Dotmatrix printer
- Epson Esc reference manual
- Basic Interpreter : PC-Basic (all Credits & thanks for the Basic providers)
- Program : Have used the sample Basic program as provided in EPSON document
100 DIM F(24)
110 FOR I=1 TO 9
120 PRINT “Which rows have dots in column”;I
130 INPUT R: IF R=0 THEN 150
140 F(I) = F(I)+2^(R-1)
150 IF R=0 THEN NEXT I ELSE GOTO 130
160 LPRINT CHR$(27)”:”CHR$(0)CHR$(0)CHR$(0);
179 LPRINT CHR$(27)”%”CHR$(1)CHR$(0);
180 LPRINT CHR$(27)”&”CHR$(0)CHR$(60)CHR$(60);
190 LPRINT CHR$(128);
200 FOR X=1 TO 9
210 LPRINT CHR$(F(X));:NEXT X
220 LPRINT CHR$(0)CHR$(0);
239 LPRINT “YOUR CHARACTER <”
240 LPRINT “IN EXPANDED PICA: “;
250 LPRINT CHR$(27)”!*<”
260 LPRINT CHR$(27) “!” CHR$(0)”YOUR DATA Numbers”
270 FOR K=1 TO 9: LPRINT F(K);: NEXT K
300 LPRINT: END
What program does :
It replaces the character “<” (ASCII character 60 ) with the user defined character design. Where as the other characters also can be replaced to print the custom character to print. The change is not perpetual in nature, the character is stored in the printer memory till the next reset of printer state (switch on to switch off ). Once the character is replaced, all the further prints will print “<” as rupee character “₹”.
Note : Seldom used ASCII characters can be replaced to achieve this output, like character set with ASCII>190
Output
Possibilities
- Similarly an user defined character can be designed and printed on 9,24,48 pin in both LQ & NLQ formats using the EPSON ESC/P2 standard
- Base principle of character printing using the printer control languages (EPSON ESC & EPSOn ESC/P2). It is generic in nature to print these characters in all Dotmatrix Epson escape sequence supported printers.
