More flexibility in label printing

[JavaBro]

I use a Brother Q570 Label printer to label my roasts. Overall it works quite nicely with Roastmaster. I experimented and tweaked till I wound up with an xml template that prints a 1 1/3 in high label on my 2 3/7 inch wide label rolls.

The only limitations are:
1) the Font Size is smaller than I want, especially the date, which is hard to read.
2) It's a B&W printer. Using the default settings, some of the printing comes out too light (because it's not "black"). I mostly solve this by printing at darkest setting and highest contrast, but it would be good if I could set the label to print as pure B&W.

I'd love it if I could set some of these parameters in the xml template (or elsewhere).

[Danny Hall]

Hi

I was never happy with the limited text options iOS provided for basic text rendering when I created that feature. For instance, there was no built in way to control leading (line spacing), so there is a lot of wasted space - particularly at small label sizes.

iOS 7 has bridged the gap here, though. When I drop support for iOS 6 I'll be free to rework the label printing engine to make it more forgiving for smaller label sizes.

I also want to provide some more control over how things get printed. From conversations with many folk, I envision a control board where you can specify things that you want to print. This will certainly help as well.

The BW Option is an interesting idea - that had never crossed my mind.

Thanks for the input!

[JavaBro]

Great. I look forward to future mods!

[djbetterly]

This is exactly what I came here to comment on.  I use a Dymo LabelWrite 450 Turbo.  As of right now, the printing is the only thing that is preventing me from using roastmaster (aside from a probe for behmor) for 100% of my bean needs. 

[Danny Hall]

Can you print PDFs on the Dymo? Their products shots suggest image capabilities, so I assume this is possible. The Dymo doesn't offer AirPrint, which of course is required for printing from iOS, but there are 3rd party products like Printopia (Mac). My own printer is not AirPrint, so I use Printopia as a bridge for my own labels. Works great!

If the Dymo supports PDFs, you can create your own label definitions for Roastmaster to fit the Dymo's label size. There are instructions and a starter kit here... http://rainfroginc.com/documentation/using-label-templates-2/