Subject: Re: envelopes
From: Michael D. Crawford (crawford@goingware.com)
Date: Sun Jul 01 2001 - 23:46:06 CDT
It happens that my main use of Word on my Windows laptop is because it is
capable of printing envelopes fairly reliably in my printer.
If I didn't need to send a printed envelope, I might not have installed Word at
all on the machine. It was bundled with it when I bought it from Compaq and I
probably would have never installed Word until I found that WordPerfect wouldn't
print envelopes. On another printer, I got cryptic error messages, with the
printer I have now, it crashes.
I also used to work extensively on Working Software's QuickLetter for the
Macintosh, among whose notable features was that it had a nice envelope
printer. Many people who owned more powerful word processors would bring up
quickletter if they wanted to print an envelope.
One thing you might look into is postal code bar coding. It's really not
necessary for personal letters - in the U.S. at least, an individual letter does
not require less postage because you bar coded it. But some users think it's
really cool and it does make your letter arrive a little faster.
Unfortunately, each nation that supports bar coding has a different standard for
it, so it will be an extra level of localization required. Maybe you'd want to
support it through some kind of plug-in. In the U.S. the USPS calls its system
PostNet. You can find out the protocol for it by calling your nearest USPS
Direct Mail Service Center. When I put PostNet bar codes into QuickLetter, the
nice people at the Direct Mail Service Center ran a stack of sample envelopes I
printed with my code through a validation machine to ensure I had done it
correctly.
Also unfortunately, the default of printing bitmapped graphics at 72 DPI through
Macintosh QuickDraw was geometrically incapable of satisfying the dimensional
requirements of the PostNet protocol. On the Mac, there are these things called
"QuickDraw comments" that allow you to insert metainformation into the print
stream - encapsulated postscript is printed this way. What I did was query the
printer for the resolutions it supported, then selected a resolution high enough
to print the bar codes correctly, and finally printed the whole envelope at a
large scale.
> There was a time that the only reason I had Word installed at home was
> to print envelopes. Is there any interest in having an envelope
> printing feature in AbiWord, with the cute little bar codes and
> everything? Is there a universal (non-platform-specific) method for
> printing under AbiWord? Where would I find this information. Also is
> there a non-platform-specific gui?
-- Michael D. Crawford GoingWare Inc. - Expert Software Development and Consulting http://www.goingware.com crawford@goingware.comTilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow.
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