Label Printing

BSI provides basic support for printing labels in label formats developed for use with the following: Brady Corporation's CODESOFT ™ (on both a single computer and a network), Labwriter or Bartender. Like the rest of BSI, this service is comprised of manager and editor windows. The manager provides a list of label formats available for printing and offers ways to modify the contents of this list. The editor accepts the data that will be encoded on the label format the user selects from the manager.  

There are several ways to print out labels. Labels can be printed from an editor by selecting the Print Labels option from the Current Label's column header menu or from the Print Labels icon on the toolbar. Labels can also be printed out from a report that has an Interactive Table format. A default label template can be specified using the preferences.

For information on how to print labels directly to a designated printer using a printer's IP address, see IP Label Printing.

When creating a label file in CodeSoft, the associated printer must be selected. For the .POF and .lab files created using CodeSoft, only files associated with printers supported by BSI can be used to print labels from the client. Since Labwriter is used to print directly onto slides, this label printing type will only work with the SlideMate™ printer. Printing using .btw Bartender files will work with any label printer.

Users must have permission to access this module, though all users can print labels from applicable tables and editors across BSI.

Labels are stored in a hierarchical directory structure.  Any user can view or use any other user’s label format, but can only save a label format in his or her own directory or the institutional directory, depending on role permissions. A local administrator can save label formats in any directory belonging to their institution.

The manager consists of a directory control on the left side, a table displaying the contents of the selected folder, and action buttons on the right.  Each label format is displayed as one row of the table.  The table consists of columns that include:

• Item ID - A unique numeric ID.

• Parent Folder - The unique ID of the parent folder of the item.

• Name - The name given to the label format when it was saved.

• User ID - The user ID of the user who saved the label format.

• Date Created - The date and time the label format was first saved.

• Date Last Modified - The date and time the label format was last modified.

• Type - The type of item listed in the manager.

The Printing Labels Editor features a single table, with the number of columns equal to the number of fields defined in the label format.  Each individual column has a name indicating the label field to which it corresponds.  Each row in this table represents the data that will compose a single label.  Label data may either be hand-entered by selecting a particular cell in a row with the mouse and typing in the information, or automatically entered by using the Import or Generate features.

The Print dialog allows the administrator to specify CodeSoft Sentinel file spoolers (detected in the copy of Sentinel.ini pointed to by bsi.cfg’s sentinel_ini_path key) and provide appropriate descriptions.  A spool destination must be described through this dialog before it will become available to the label printing system.

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