Centralize Print Server With Seagull With Stock Setup
Hello,
We have a centralize print server that we want to use to manage our 100+ Zebra Printers to go along with 3500+ end user Windows Workstations. We have elected to go with the Seagull drivers instead of the native Zebra since we have been informed that it works a lot better and prints better labels. We discover a really strange problem and unsure if this is a configuration issue or is a design/architectural issue.
We have installed one printer queue on the centralize print server using the seagull driver and we modified the stock for the queue. By default, there was 5 stock size to choose from, we only need one or two due to our requirements, and not all zebra printers will have the same stock size as well. We made the modification to the stock size and everything seems to work. Now the bizarre thing that occurs is when we add another zebra printer queue on the centralize print server, it undid all our changes on the first queue and revert back to the default number of stock sizes. What makes matter worst if we make a change to one print queue on the print server (add a custom stock) it automatically changes the other printer queues that uses the seagull driver. Not sure if this was done be designed. It appears that the Seagull print drivers uses some sort of "shared" dll or registery key that each printer queue reads in to determine the number for stock sizes, which begs the question if it was meant to be used in a centralize enterprise print server.
The reason why we wanted to control the stock sizes at the print server level, is because I do not want to modify 3500+ workstations with login scripts, registry scripts, etc. to modify the stock sizes for each driver. Is there a work-around or perhaps a commerical product that Seagull offers that can fix this issue?
Any insight or help would be appreciated.
Regards,
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Stock sizes for Seagull printer drivers are shared by all Seagull drivers on the same system. This is akin to regular drivers sharing the standard Windows page sizes in server properties.
*Note that the "USER" stock size is not a true stock size but is an empty slot into which an application can load in a page size from the document to be printed.
A common issue with stock sizes is when an application doesn't embed the page size and/or print settings as part of the document that's being printed; instead being content to just inherit the default settings of the selected driver. The specific problem with the page size is that normally a label printer is not the Windows default printer on most user's computers, rather some form of office printer is the default, with a default A4 or Letter page size. When the document is opened with this default office driver selected, if an embedded page size isn't set in the document it will just pick up the default of the driver. The document is now set to A4/Letter page size. Switching to the Seagull driver the application tries to use an A4/Letter page size, which doesn't exist, and so it instead forces the closest size it can into the USER slot. Normally this results in the page height being equal to the A4/Letter dimension, and the width being the widest dimension the narrow print head supports. To at least prevent this issue you can disable the USER stock size via the "Page Setup" tab and "Advanced Options" button in the driver properties.
Our solution for label printing is the BarTender Windows application for label design and printing. One benefit of using BarTender is that all page setup and printing preferences are embedded into the BarTender document and used when printing, so that it will always print as designed no matter what default settings are made in each driver instance.
If you need a printing solution that integrates with your existing system then you'll be happy to learn that there are numerous integration options such as the Commander middleware application, command lines, ActiveX (COM) automation and a .NET SDK. Feel free to download a 30 day trial edition from the below link:
http://www.bartenderbarcodesoftware.com/label-software/barcode-label-printing-software-download.aspx
White papers on various BarTender subjects can be found here:
http://www.bartenderbarcodesoftware.com/label-software/white-papers.aspx
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