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I am trying to print continuously on a 6x12 inch continous paper, without any regard for perforation that comes at every 12inch of the paper.

This is my problem:

The document that i have is a bill receipt. so there could be either one item or ten items based on the order. So if i print a receipt for just one single item (that covers just 3-4 inches) i am wasting another 8 inches of the paper, because after printing the document printer automatically pushes the entire 12 inches (1 paper) out and moves on to next one.

i tried adjusting the paper size by 6x4 inch in printer settings, but it is not ideal for me. since i have to print the header and footer again for the next section of the page.

is there anyway to print continuously without wasting too much paper?

Navis gero
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1 Answers1

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The problem is that most applications print "pages". In your case, Excel will always print a full page, even if it is empty. The same goes for the Windows driver.

The simplest way to achieve what you want is to send the data to the printer as plain text, using the DOS Print or Copy commands. Or, you could use the Generic/Text Only driver. If that works, you can then enhance the output by including various printer commands in order to format the text the way you like it. Excel can save your data in CSV format, which is pain text with cells separated by commas.

There is an additional problem here, because the above assumes your printer understands plain text. Most low-cost printers do not: they rely on the Windows graphics engine to convert a page into dots on the paper. They are called host-based printers, using names like GDI, LIDL, PCL3, etc, and all they understand is their own format of dots on the paper.

Printers for which this can be made to work are those that support either PCL5 or Esc/P languages, as they do understand plain text, and let you insert formatting commands into the print stream. Of course, this will involve some programming.

Another issue: your paper is perforated. What will you do if a receipt crosses the perforation? Your program may need to take care of that.

hdhondt
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