CUPS driver for thermal receipt printers (was: zj-58)

CUPS filter for thermal receipt printers for rolls 58 and 80mm.

Originally it was filter for Zijiang zj-58 with specific PPD, but later it is revealed that it actually works with many other cheap 58mm printers, like Xprinter XP-58, etc. Also support for 80mm printers added.

Printing is performed from cups-raster using ESC/POS sequence 'GS v 0 '. Empty (zero) lines feeded as 'feed' command (to avoid send empty raster).

Also 2 Cash Drawers supported, with tunable impulse length for 'on' and 'off.'

Build

You need toolchain, CMake and cups-devel.

It may be achieved, say (as example) by running

sudo apt install build-essential cmake libcups2-dev libcupsimage2-dev

After it the filter could be built by the sequence of commands:

  mkdir build && cd build && cmake ..
  make

Installation

Need administrative rights!

  sudo make install

'Sudo' is necessary to stop/restart cups service before operation, and also to place files with necessary rights.

Debian packaging

For simplicity done with the same script as installation, so also need adminstrative rights.

  sudo cpack -G DEB

That will stop/start cups as a side effect, however that is not critical.