Improvement ideas for XML::Printer::ESCPOS

This document tries to summarize what needs to be done to make XML::Printer::ESCPOS a module that is easy to use.

Implement Printer::ESCPOS methods

• font
• justify
• fontHeight
• fontWidth
• charSpacing
• lineSpacing
• selectDefaultLineSpacing
• printPosition
• leftMargin
• printNVImage
• printImage

The following methods could be implemented, but are not really content methods:

• cutPaper
• print

Ideas for convenience functions

• Add special tag(s) for creating table-like prints. This could be useful for receipt printing, for example. It should contain automatic word wrapping or automatic cropping of long texts.
• Add horizontal line tag <hr />
• Set global values for <utf8ImagedText> attributes. This way we could omit setting the font for every line.

Fix improvable implementations

image

• The <image> tag currently only works with PNG files. This should be replaced by a function that checks for file extension to select import method. JPEG and GIF should be possible in addition to PNG.
• The <image> tag function contains a hacky workaround for problems with my printer: We send ->print() before and after ->image() to the printer object. In plain Printer::ESCPOS code this is not necessary. If it is not fixable, it maybe should be configurable by an <image> tag attribute.
• Write good tests for image tag.

Documentation

Add documentation describing the XML structure to use. By now you can find examples in the test suite.

SUPPORT AND BUGS

Please report any bugs or feature requests by opening an issue on Github.

LICENSE AND COPYRIGHT

Copyright (C) 2017 Dominic Sonntag.

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the the Artistic License (2.0). You may obtain a copy of the full license at:

http://www.perlfoundation.org/artistic_license_2_0