Version 2.0 released – upgrading from previous versions

Tested, Very Good, Problem:

– Not showing the Delivery informations
– Arabic NOT SUPPORTED
– Couldn’t able to change the Font at list to any kind like Caliribi or Helvetica font

Good Job, Have a nice day

• This reply was modified 3 years, 9 months ago by alamery.

Great job,
Being able to print 2 copies and trigger from order processing makes such a difference for my restaurant – thank you. Changing the header and adding the external buzzer is also a nice touch.

I use Bizswoop’s ‘Store Hours Manager for WooCommerce’ & ‘Order Hours Scheduler Delivery for WooCommerce’ plugins for scheduled deliveries but the new custom-fields option does not pick this up – any suggestions?

Just a few suggestions for future versions which I feel would be beneficial to many users:

• Option to add logo/image on the top of the receipt without having to load on the printer Flash ROM.
• List items by product category in the form of sub-headings.
• Show coupon/discount information.
• Include option to add a footer message.

Would be great to see any of these, if not all!

• This reply was modified 3 years, 9 months ago by dineintec.
• This reply was modified 3 years, 9 months ago by dineintec.

@alamery Thank you for your useful feedback.
Compatibility with delivery solutions does depend on how your delivery plugin works, but in most cases enabling the “Print additional order meta-data, such as custom fields.” option will help. You may also want to try to enable printing hidden fields. I this doesn’t work, please let me know which plugin you are using to add delivery features to your site and I can not make any promises, but will add it to the list of plugins to test/evaluate for integration.

The limitations of no selectable font, and Arabic are related. This plugin can only print using the font that it built-in to the printer, which also doesn’t have support for right-to-left languages. This is one of the limitations of the printer communicating with your site directly, unlike other solutions which have richer font/layout support, but require that the printer is connected to a PC. I have built a solution for this, which allows HTML printing, with standard fonts, right-to-left support and Arabic. It uses Star hosted servers to handle the font rendering, and works by allowing you to send new order emails from your site to the printer, which also means very good integration with third party plugins. This a service offered by Star EMEA office, and if you would like to test it, please contact us directly (you can use this form to pass on your details to me).

@dineintec Thanks for testing and giving feedback.

Unfortunately not all plugins store their extra information in the same way, and I have not (yet) tested the Bizswoop plugins. It looks like you are in the UK, so you can also try our email based printing service which will integrate with any plugin that adds information to your sites “new order” email. If you want to test that then we need to speak directly to provide access credentials, so please use this form to allow me to contact you directly. Using this system potentially resolves all of your suggestions too.

Easier Image Printing
Yes, I agree. In the future I may well add support for printing logos from the media library. My only real concern is that this will have to rely on php libraries that are not available for all sites.

List Items By Category
You are not the first to request this. I can’t promise any time frame etc. but it is a known request.

Coupon/Discount Information
This should be working now with version 2.0. Do you use the standard WooCommerce coupon system or something provided by another plugin?

Footer Message
I didn’t add this in 2.0 just to avoid adding complication to the coming templating system. But once that is in place it should be easy for you to add. Hopefully the new option to configure the message displayed under the item list is a useful start.

@lawrenceowen
Thank you for your new release!

I tried version 2.0.0, and found one issue.

– WordPress 5.6.1
– WooCommerce 5.0.0
– Star CloudPRNT for WooCommerce 2.0.0

I operated the following steps.

1. Install this plugin as a new installation (older versions are not installed)
2. On the settings page, change “CloudPRNT” from “DISABLE” to “ENABLE” and save it.
3. After that, when I place an order from the site, the receipt is printed, but the “Receipt Title” and “Item list footer message” are not printed.
4. On the other hand, when I print manually from “Print with Star CloudPRNT” in the admin panel, they are printed.

At this point, I looked at the DB records and found that there were no entries in the “Receipt Title” and “Item list footer message”.

$ wp db query "SELECT * FROM wp_options WHERE option_name LIKE '%star-cloudprnt-print-%'"
+-----------+----------------------------------------+--------------+----------+
| option_id | option_name                            | option_value | autoload |
+-----------+----------------------------------------+--------------+----------+
|     31661 | star-cloudprnt-print-copies-input      | 1            | yes      |
|     31662 | star-cloudprnt-print-order-meta-cb     |              | yes      |
|     31663 | star-cloudprnt-print-order-meta-hidden |              | yes      |
|     31664 | star-cloudprnt-print-logo-top-cb       |              | yes      |
|     31665 | star-cloudprnt-print-logo-top-input    |              | yes      |
|     31666 | star-cloudprnt-print-logo-bottom-cb    |              | yes      |
|     31667 | star-cloudprnt-print-logo-bottom-input |              | yes      |
+-----------+----------------------------------------+--------------+----------+

If I re-save the “Receipt Title” and “Item list footer message” with different values in the settings page, it seems to be updated in the DB records.

Is this happening to you?

@ko31 You are absolutely right, those settings don’t seem to be saved to the database if they are unchanged from the default. Thanks for catching this!

@ko31

I’ve re-located the setting registration, to make sure that all settings are registered before any calls to the receipt generation code, even if they aren’t already stored in the database. Could you try the 2.0.1 sample from the 2.0 betas page? Hopefully that resolved the issue for you.

Note that the settings still will not be written to the database unless they are changed, but this is expected behaviour, and the code in order-handler should still have access to those option values now.

@lawrenceowen I’ve just purchased and set up a star cloud printer for my client’s restaurant using the new plugin – It all works great and it’s great to see that you have extended the functionality based on previous support requests.

On the subject of printing to multiple prints & mapping certain product categories to certain printers. My client requires a cloud printer in the kitchen (for food orders), and a cloud printer at the bar (for drinks orders).

1.) Does the latest plugin now handle multiple active printers so that at the very least both printers will print both categories of orders?

2.) Do you know if/when you would release the functionality to map product categories to printers? Or could you advise who I could speak to about getting this work commissioned?

Thanks

• This reply was modified 3 years, 9 months ago by amit79.

@lawrenceowen

I tried the 2.0.1 and I think the issue is fixed.
I’m grateful for your quick response!

@ko31 Thanks for the quick check ?? and especially for finding/reporting the issue. I’ll release an official 2.0.1 within a few days.

@amit79 Good to hear that it’s working ??

Right now, the official version of the plugin allows you to register multiple printers, but only allows one to be in active use. There is an experimental version you can download and try from here (note, that is a temporary link, it will expire in two weeks), which will output the same print job to all of the printers that you connect to your site.

Thee is no a fixed schedule, but I do have plans to support multiple printers as an official option, once I resolve the potential security concern. Support for a bar printer is a regular request, and so I really do understand the need to restrict by category and intend this to be possible.

I don’t personally know a developer that may be able to help, but some users of this forum seem willing to offer consultancy and modifications. I will at least release a new sample with output to all printers, based on the new 2.0 version within a couple of weeks. Be aware that any changes you make to 2.0 are unlikely to be compatible with future releases, so I’d recommend against investing too much in modifying it. If you can manage initially with printing the full ticket in both kitchen and bar, then future versions will provide a much more robust method of implementing your changes.

@lawrenceowen thanks I’ll try out the experimental version and watch out for the official feature once you’ve nailed the security risk.

It will unlock a lot of business efficiency once we can target product categories to printers.

Keep up the great work.

Thank you for the much needed update.

https://ibb.co/RgdJRLk

In the linked photo I identified some duplicate and/or unnecessary info on the printed receipts using the red arrows. Also, it does not show the tax info, rather it is just providing totals.

From my perspective as a restaurant owner, I would like to see the receipts more neatly organized so that what is ordered is easily identified. The Quantity section should be beside the item name, not below it and ideally in Bold letters just like the item name is. This was a problem one night when we got an order in and on first glance it looked like one pizza was ordered but after we made it and customer complained we went back to look at this receipt and sure enough the order was for 2 pizzas. I think it would be better written like this:

2x Pizza Name

It would be nice to be able to toggle on and off all those different lines on the receipt as we deem necessary. I saw that there is now an exclude option but I dont really know how to use that.

Thank you again for your efforts, this connection between website and brick and mortar is so important these days and your plugin makes a huge difference.

@miclovin Thanks for your feedback. Most of your requests are pretty common so need to be addressed soon. The Version 2.0 release contains a lot of internal changes so that I can start to add more flexibility and react more quickly to the common requirements like these.

None of the information you identified is actually a duplicate, but of course it is completely unnecessary for many users. For example the time/date at the top is the time of printing, not the Order time, but in most cases that is the same – it is useful for some customers who do not auto print when a new order is generated, or to identify re-prints.

The new exclude option is to remove unwanted additional fields from the “Additional Order Information” section, which I think you have disabled currently anyway. It will not help with removing information from the item list. But I fully understand your suggestions, you can expect those to be addressed over the next few updates.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 9 months ago by lawrenceowen.

Hey,

I’m having trouble with the update, the receipts used to print off the shipping method and I can’t seem to get this to work?

Could someone please help me with this please.

Thanks