Where do you get zebra printer fonts for print preview?

Steve Kallestad picture Steve Kallestad · Feb 16, 2013 · Viewed 10.9k times · Source

I'm printing labels with a Zebra printer using Java by sending ZPL II commands. I want to show a preview of the label before sending it to the printer.

Rather than trying to send fonts to the printer, I'd like to use the built in fonts.

I can see a list of the fonts on page 60 of the programming guide volume 2. There are 15 of them, each labeled with a single letter and no reference to the name of an equivalent screen font.

I can generate an image to display of the barcode, but I'm having trouble figuring out how to display the text appropriately because outside of the OCR fonts, I don't know of an equivalent font to leverage on-screen.

I haven't found any documentation that lists them at Zebra's website, and my searching is only returning results on how to send screen fonts to the printer (which looks complex enough for me to want to avoid at this point).

Does anybody know where I can get the fonts, or would you be able to provide me with a list of (hopefully free) equivalents?

I took a screenshot of the fonts displayed in the manual for reference.

Answer

Steve Kallestad picture Steve Kallestad · Feb 16, 2013

After much research, I discovered that the fonts Zebra uses are tightly protected because of licensing.

Contacting Zebra about obtaining a license for the fonts is your only option.

The alternative I'm using for now is to preview the label with a free-to-distribute monospaced true-type font (which I haven't yet selected). The document I linked in my question provides size and spacing information for the built-in fonts so I can emulate as close as possible.