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glabels: Ready For Prime Time
Joe Barr writes "NewsForge is running a review of glabels. It's still in beta status, but it's ready for prime time now. It knows hundreds of predefined label formats and allows you to design your own templates for custom work. Barcodes, images, just about anything but MP3 tracks can be printed on them. glabels is destined to become one of the most popular native apps for Linux." If you need harder-core barcode support, the excellent kbarcode would probably make a good complement. (NewsForge and Slashdot are both part of OSDN.)
wouldnt it make more sense to package a label printing facility as part of Open Office as apposed to a standalone application ?
great idea that *nix has this now but these sorts of things have been standard in MSWord for a long time, do i really need to open a specific application (and all the hassle of saving/re-opening) just to print a label or envelope ?
This seems like a nice little application, but I don't think you do it any favours by hyping it up so much. Great label-making program, check; most popular native application for Linux? That might be a bit of a stretch
That's great. I've been using an inexpensive program that's called Labels Unlimited 2 that did a great job handeling graphics, bar codes, database, and serial number functions. That's one less reason to keep a Win box. Now if only they can get National Geographic Back Roads Explorer and the state series TOPO maps ported...
The truth shall set you free!
So where's the native Mac OS X version? Or will it run natively within the Mac OS X compile of GNOME?
There's two main parts.
Each card is printed sideways with album cover art, artist, title and track listing. A barcode on both sides of the card uniquely identifies it. When inserted the PC analyzes the image to pick out the barcode. The barcode is linked to a playlist, which is played when the card is inserted.
I must admit, I never had the itch to make labels in linux. Not that big of a fan, really, but I do see the need for it. (labels, that is)
People will dismiss this project as a pointless waste of time, but I do believe it has its merits. If nothing else, think of it as something shiny to attract new users...or at least give them more of a cushion when they switch OS. (you don't usually switch because of apps as much as you DON'T switch because of a lack of apps)
We've seen lots of craptastic freeware/shareware stuff for Windows. Heck, back when I watched TechTV more, they had free files featured to do anything you didn't want to do to begin with. All I'm saying here is that it's a Good Thing(TM) to have apps created for linux.
Give us a GUI that does a batch mogrify on a folder of images. Give us more cute little penguins dancing on the screen. Give us something that does random "at" jobs to play random soundbytes to annoy others. Give us Elf Bowling. Give us whatever you fancy to write.
In the end, hack away to your heart's content. Write code, give code, learn from code. I can't look any of you coders in the eyes and say "you're wasting your time." Instead I say keep up the good work and keep churning good code.
not me, i'm browsing with links on a 10 year old retired desktop (got it for free :)) that doesn't even have x installed
it's still functional!
After I recently finished my Ph.D., I put together over 70 job market packets. For both appearances and efficiency, I needed to generate labels by the dozen.
Much to my surprise, there was an ebuild of gLabels for Gentoo. Even more to my surprise, even though it's in beta, it worked flawlessly. The interface was so well done that I never even needed to look for help files.
Kudos to the gLabels team!
-- My choice of computing platform is a symbol of my individuality and belief in personal freedom.
We don't use windows or linux and would kill for the hardware support of either OS.
The majority of readers we use operate off of a keyboard wedge. Nothing special there it just fakes keystrokes.
As for the printers it's usually just a case of pumping through the correct control codes to get what you want out. We use barcode blasters and the code required to get one barcode with say an item description, and price is maybe 20 lines. It's easy and the codes are always included with the printer or on the website documentation. Perhaps I should take the time to adding support for the printers I have access to.
Now the more advanced stuff, USB scanners and printers may require more work but I doubt it can be that hard.
you haven't lived (as a computer geek) until you've worked on a coding project, 20 hours a day for 5 weeks, sitting in a chilly halon-smelling computer room, with a 128-char daisy-wheel printer chattering away in your ear, printing label print jobs you spooled with 'lp sometextfile' 4 months ago
until you've been there, its hard to understand why its not so easy to get excited about a program called 'gLabels', which just seems so
you need a GUI to print labels? Bwwaaaahahahaaaahahaahaa! here's a dime kid, go by yourself a chance to type 'man awk' at some command line
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --