Overview
First introduced to the market in 1972, the thermal printer has unquestionably earned its reputation as a reliable and durable technology. It truly found its niche when bar code labeling became widely used across many industries and functions, mainly because of its ability to print large quantities of durable bar code labels. Thermal barcode label printers have becom the workhorse of the barcode labeling industry.
However, early generations of these printers had a significant disadvantage. They used proprietary printer command languages created by each manufacturer. Customers who used such printers often spent significant amounts of time and money integrating their existing or legacy information systems with these thermal bar code label printers so they could successfully communicate with each other. There was, unfortunately, no standardized thermal printer language used for communication and control.
Happily, leaders in the thermal bar code label print industry have now largely adopted a standardized print language known as the Hewlett Packard (HP) Printer Command Language (PCL). It’s important to understand why the HP PCL bar code label solution is critically important for users wishing to print the highest quality bar code labels using thermal printer technology.
