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Form Overlay

Started by Raiko, 2010.07.15, 09:48:56

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Raiko

I've been trying several ways to to get logos printed on invoices produced by Concorde XAL,
and got it to work by changing a font file. However, by using a form overlay I would get better
formatting of the invoices.
The form simply can be created in OpenOffice or WordPro, but how to convert it into an OVL file?


NNYITGuy

Hi Raiko,

Nealy 20 years ago I built a C program for OS/2 v1.3 to build such an overlay into HP PCL based printers and then place text and numbers with grid coordinates onto the overlayed image.  The forms were tax forms, the overlay was a tiff image scanned from an original doc from a document scanner.

So, I know that my implementation from back then is not what you need now.  But my whole implementation used ESC codes that PCL understood to control the overlay and the grid process.  An idea might be to print your form from OpenOffice to a file.  Then maybe use an escape sequence to direct you printer to take the prn file a level 1 and then print from your software for the form contents.  The final contents would finish with a FF and the completed for would then print.

I know that I am shooting in the dark here, have not worked on such a project in nearly 20 years.  But maybe the ideas from me might offer a path forward in your thoughts...

Best regards,
-Todd
Todd J Simpson (IT Consultant)
Business Automation Technologies
(Professional Products and Services.  Business to Business...)

Raiko

Thank you Todd, but after quite some time editing and testing a font file, and trial and error with the accounting apps report builder, I have now achieved a good result. This way I can also easily create PDF's identical to the invoices printed on paper.