Receipt Print Modification

Receipt Print Modification Right Click 3.0 Kevin Devine Euclid Public Library August 22, 2007

The Problem
Handwritten slips for reserves
No consistency
Bad spelling / penmanship
100s handwritten each day
Even in front of patrons waiting to checkout!

The Goal
Before
After

From the beginning
Can it be done?
How will it work?
Can our ILS do this?
Initially, the answer was “No”, but the question lingered… Could this be done?

TIME PASSES…

A New Problem Arises

Goal Revisited
Routing Before
Routing After

Options?
Screen capture / OCR / Print
Utilizing Window Handles to get Textboxes
Staff copy and paste to another application
Change ILS to a system that works better
Capture Spool file and modify output

Spool File What are these?

Escape Codes
Specific to each brand of printer
SDK on website
List of commands
Font height and width
Bold, Underline, Italics
Line feeds, cut paper
Change text orientation

Example Escape Code (in code)
ChrW(27) & ChrW(104) & ChrW(51) & ChrW(27) & ChrW(87) & ChrW(49) & ChrW(27) & ChrW(45) & ChrW(49) & ChrW(27) & ChrW(69) & sName
ChrW(27) & ChrW(104) & ChrW(48) & ChrW(27) & ChrW(87) & ChrW(48) & ChrW(27) & ChrW(45) & ChrW(48) & ChrW(27) & ChrW(70)
Bold, Underline, Height = 4, Width = 2 turned on
The second bullet turns those all off

Capturing a Print Job
Small jobs enter and exit the spool quickly
Pause/Unpause the queue?
Create a “dummy” printer
Copy modified spool file to real printer

A Little Bit of Code
Monitoring application
VB.net
Watches the “dummy” print queue
Looks for keywords in spool file
HOLD FOR:
in transit to:
Modifies the spool file with escape codes
Copies to the real printer

Results
Circulation was ecstatic!
Reserves have readable names
Routing slips are easy
Patrons are not waiting for the staff to write out slips
Customer Service and line speed have increased

Time Comparison
Before
Writing reserve slips
20 seconds
Writing routing slips
20 seconds
Reserves per month: 9000
Routing per month: 4000
Total Time:
72 hours a month
After
Printing reserve slips
2 seconds
Printing routing slips
2 seconds
Reserves per month: 9000
Routing per month: 4000
Total Time:
7 hours a month
It cut the work down to 1/10 th of before!

Any Questions?
Receipt Print Modification
Right Click 3.0
Kevin Devine
Euclid Public Library
[email_address]
August 22, 2007

Receipt Print Modification

by guestbc7e13 on Aug 29, 2007

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Receipt Print Modification — Presentation Transcript