PDF Print layout for thermal printer

[M4T VW]

My business has just signed up to fedex UK as we need a 3rd courier on board.

My current 2 , City-link & UK mail both have the option to print to a thermal printer, Of which i use on both.
Fedex however doesnt. They supply you an A4 sheet thats split horizontal into 3 labels.
This is bad as i dont/wont use another printer just to put the labels in. I dont understand why they dont use thermal, Stupid if you ask me.

The way their system works is you book it online, Click the "print lable" button and it displays a PDF with your lable in, Or however many packages there are on the A4 sheet.
The link it comes up with is http://www.fedexuk.net/accounts/ShowPDF.aspx

What i want to do is somehow redesign or fit the details on that A4 into a lable, And i have no idea what is the best way around it.
Could i create a printer that "captures" the data from the A4, Puts it into a lable and then prints to a thermal printer?
The layout would have to be pretty nifty as it could be sometimes several packages so would have to capture the data from coordinates of the PDF.

Anyone understand or am i barking up the wrong tree?

Cheers
Mat:popcorn:

[PeterStoba]

Can't view that link Mat.

[DoubleTop]

you would need to use something like pdftotext and then format into a layout for your thermal printer, and then I wonder if the drivers would accept a non standard address label (to them).

DT.

[Smifis]

Do you want something to automatically transfer the data to a new layout, or do you want someone to fit all the info onto a new template for you?

[M4T VW]

Can't view that link Mat.

Didn't think you would, just showing that it doesnt link to a template or anything, it just goes straight to the PDF


you would need to use something like pdftotext and then format into a layout for your thermal printer, and then I wonder if the drivers would accept a non standard address label (to them).

My problem would be that the text is allways different due to different addresses & a barcode!

DT.


Do you want something to automatically transfer the data to a new layout, or do you want someone to fit all the info onto a new template for you?

Yes, for something to take the text and put it in a new template and print it.

[Smifis]

could you do on, save it and upload it somewhere for us?

[M4T VW]

Not at the moment, Any lable has info on it that i couldnt show you due to data protection.

However, I have had a thought.
You can extract the text from the PDF file including the barcode as it displays the number for it so i just recreate a code 39 barcode on the new layout.

So what im thinking is a VB app that you feed the PDF into and then it takes extracts the text from it and converts it into the new layout and prints it:woot:

[M4T VW]

Well, It seems PDF is pretty hard to read in .net.
You can save the PDF as a .text in Adobe reader but i wanted it automated really.

I think a call to fedex is on the cards. For them not to print to thermal is not on...