Wiki - Printer Emulators
Compatibility
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✅ 2.1 |✅ 2.0 |✅ 1.9 | ...
Background
The high costs of printer hardware can make a developer's job difficult when designing a product which has printing capabilities. Various methods exist for printing to virtual printers which avoid the need to purchase physical hardware during the research and development phases of a project as well as baseline troubleshooting of functionality.
Printer emulation is a critical part of reducing the overhead associated with a development lifecycle. Listed below are common printer hardware emulators/methods.
Pixel
| OS | Name | Pixel | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|
| Windows | PDFCreator | Recommended choice for Windows. Download | |
| Windows | CutePDF | Good alternative to PDFCreator | |
| Windows | PrimoPDF | Good alternative to PDFCreator | |
| Windows | Microsoft XPS Document Writer | 600 dpi only; known to degrade image quality | |
| Windows | Microsoft Print to PDF | 600 dpi only; known to degrade image quality | |
| macOS | RWTS PDFwriter | Recommended choice for MacOS. Download | |
| macOS | Lisanet PDFwriter | Requires workarounds for macOS 10.10+ | |
| Linux | CUPS-PDF | Recommended choice for Linux. Download via apt/dnf/etc |
Raw
| OS | Name | Raw | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|
| Windows | QPCPrint |
|
Windows 7 or lower, disable UAC. Download |
| Windows | Bematech |
|
Download (Portugese language) |
| Windows | FILE: |
|
Configure, Inspect output using XVI32 hex editor |
| All | Labelary |
|
Recommended for ZPL. Visit site |
| All | ZPL Emulator (Chrome app) |
|
Based off Labelary. Download Note: Increase the buffer to something large (e.g. 50000B) and use "set to host" to print. |
