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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.)
..back in The Day we'd just "cat >
Trolling is a art,
glabels is destined to become one of the most popular native apps for Linux
Oh yes, because I can't make it through the day without printing labels.
Either this is a statement about the status of Linux apps, or a comment on the poster's anal retentivness.
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
Now I can just print out my own!
+1, Insightful!
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+3, Agrees with My Post
-10, Thinks Bush is doing Great Things
+1.3, Made an original Joke about Soviet Russia
-4, Rants about the RIAA but still buys CDs
+42, Post by me, explaining the Meaning of Life.
As a geek girl and former clerk I can say that it's really awesome to have software that gives me time to do things other than work. Labels are the most obnoxious thing to make, too. To quote Homer (guess which one): I hate them SO MUCH!
its not kbarcode.org, but kbarcode.net
Since a barcode is merely a specialized format for binary data (similar to a hard drive's RLL, in fact), I'm sure it's a matter of time until someone figures out how to transfer audio data to a print medium, for later retrieval via barcode scanner.
I know a hobbyist magazine back in the '80s used to print entire programs in barcode format. I think it was for the old Radio Shack Model 100 laptop.
Sorry, you can't have it both ways. Nope.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I sense great hostility in the crowd...
Quick! Someone post some SCO news.
"Kittens give Morbo gas!"
You've never had a mindlessly boring desk job have you? It may not be cool, but it may be very popular with those assigned the most tedious tasks in the office. That's normally a girl, by the way. Anyway, it is a dull story. It still makes me happy, though.
I recently used it to mass-print a bunch of name badges on name badge stock in my laser printer.
I have also used it for labels; you can print just a few labels from a sheet, by specifying which label to start printing upon. So, if you have a sheet of labels, and you have used up the first 11, you can tell gLabels to start printing labels on the 12th label on the sheet. It's slick.
Finally, this is just the thing for address labels on a dedicated mini-label printer. I don't have that set up yet, but I intend to soon.
Someone asked why you can't just use OpenOffice for your labels; I want to have OpenOffice print by default to my laser printer, and gLabels by default print to the mini labels-only printer. I wouldn't object to OpenOffice knowing how to pass labels off to the mini-label printer too, of course.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
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.
just about anything but MP3 tracks can be printed on them
So it prints OGG & AVI files then?
I see lots of jokes about barcodes software and how ground breaking it is being made here. It's obvious that the people making those jokes don't work in retail software.
I write Point of sale and inventory management software and good easy handling of barcodes is a huge thing with customers, even if it is relatively boring software wise. Programs like this may seem like nothing but they will go a long way towards linux acceptance in key non server locations.
RFID may be the new hotness but barcodes still rule the retail world.
Printing was done at 72dpi. Hello, my printer is 1200 dpi, can you please take advantage of it?
You're getting dpi and dpi confused.
Your 1200dpi printer can only print black (or CMY) dots on a (usually) white background. You see, it needs to use all those 1200 dots per inch to render halftones, so that if you stand back far enough an area will look kind of like the approximated colour and not just a collection of dots.
These labels are formatted at 72 dpi. That's 72 full-colour 24-bit fully-toned dots per inch, not a collection of dots that differ only in size.
There is a formula somewhere that converts perceived dpi to perceived dpi, but I can't recall it...
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
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.
OpenOffice (nor Corel Wordperfect or MS Word) are acceptable substitues for a real label making program -- have many Slashdotters ever bothered to try and print out CD labels or covers/trays to pre-scored stock (like the Avery media available)? Futzing around with templates in Word Processors sucks -- they are designed for linear text. Publishing apps are a little better, but there is nothing like the right tool for the job.
A program like Avery DesignPro or Surething CD Labeller for Windows makes producing such things very quick and painless.. it is good that this sort of thing is now available under Linux.
The reason (well, one of them at least), that Linux lacks as a desktop is BECAUSE of the lack of useful tools like this; answers like "You don't really need a (label-making program, greeting card maker, etc.), just use OOo" or "You don't need a WYSIWYG HTML editor, just use vi" completely miss the point.
BTW, I, for one, could really use a good greeting card program, like Sierra Print Artist. Does any such thing exist?