APPLE PRINTER DRIVER APPLICATION NOTES

Apple printer drivers will support all recent FGL printers. (NOTE:  Old FGL printers may not support the use of printer drivers.  FGL driver support was first introduced in 2000 on FGL22/42 printers.)  The driver will allow you to communicate through driver dependent applications (Word, Excel, Safari) and/or access the printer over a network.  Please note that the only printer status information readily available with these drivers is whether or not the printer is ready to receive data.  These drivers will not return status on any interface. 

Printer Driver Installation Guide

Mac Driver Install Guide 2021

Sample Code - bidirectional communication

Xcode file print sample program with status read

General

A printer driver translates the graphical information displayed in your Mac application into a printer friendly format.  In order to properly format the data, the user must correctly establish the page size and margins.  In general, you should use the smallest margins which do not cause the data to wrap around to the opposite side of the ticket.  Apple supports the following methods of defining page sizes:

• Vendor (BOCA) Defined - We have pre-defined some common page (ticket) sizes which can be used with any Windows application.  You must use a BOCA defined page size to define your document.  If you cannot locate the proper size, choose the next larger size and use the margins to define your ticket size.
• Custom Size - This option does not work properly.  We do not recommend the use of this method.

All of the data sent to the Mac is provided in graphical format.  This differs from our Windows print drivers which utilize the printer’s resident fonts to send certain fonts as text, not graphics.  Our Windows drivers define tickets as width x length with the landscape mode of a 2 x 5.5 ticket printing as shown below.  Our Apple drivers define tickets as length x width with the portrait mode of a 5.5 x 2 ticket as shown below.

Printer Models (adjustable vs. fixed and reverse adjustable)

Due to a variety of legacy issues and driver limitations, an adjustable FGL printer operating in portrait mode requires an <rte> command in order to properly format the ticket.  This command only needs to be sent once as it is permanently stored in the printer's memory.  (You can send the printer and <rtd> command to reverse an erroneously sent <rte> command.)  Please note the manner in which the printer formats the ticket in the various scenarios shown below.