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In addition to operating "stand-alone," all versions of BarTender can be controlled from within your other applications. However, the Enterprise Edition adds advanced features especially designed for software integration. That means accounting, manufacturing, inventory, shipping and other supply-chain applications can easily access BarTender's powerful label-printing features. In fact, your users don't even have to know that it's BarTender printing the labels. Depending on your goals and the capabilities of your other programs, there are three basic ways to control BarTender: Comparing Enterprise Edition with Other BarTender Editions
Taking advantage of the latest in Microsoft's ActiveX integration technology, the Enterprise Edition can easily be controlled by other software programs. Numerous functions are available such as:
What Kinds of Applications Can Issue ActiveX Commands? Most standard Windows development tools can issue ActiveX Automation commands, including:
Many prewritten applications also provide an interface that gives users access to Windows´ ActiveX capabilities. (Any application such as MS-Word or Excel that supports "Visual Basic for Applications" certainly will have that capability.)
"Command Line" control of BarTender, available in all editions, uses less sophisticated software technology than ActiveX Automation. However, it still allows any program capable of issuing a "run program" command to load BarTender and launch print jobs. Sample Command Line This is a sample command line for use inside of Visual Basic. It launches BarTender (if it´s not already running), loads a label format called "ucc-ean128.btw," and prints it: Shell("bartend.exe /f=ucc-ean128.btw /p") The "Shell" part is specific to Visual Basic and differs somewhat in other development environments. The part inside the quotes is the actual command line and will not change for other environments. What Can I Do and Not Do Using Command Lines? Among the available functions are:
Some capabilities not available when using command-line control instead of ActiveX Automation are:
Commander, and add-on utility included with the Enterprise Edition of BarTender, lets other applications control BarTender print jobs. By simply creating a data file, your other application gives you access to Commander's powerful integration capabilities. Commander is useful for controlling BarTender whenever:
How Commander Works Using Commander, your other application makes labels by first generating a text file. Commander detects the file's arrival and then "wakes up" BarTender, which reads your data and prints your labels. This can be especially helpful on larger, enterprise networks where a non-Windows systems in generating your label data and doesn't have direct access to your Windows applications. E-mail Integration As an alternative to file-based triggers and label data, Commander can also detect triggers and receive label data via e-mail. Great for Windows-Only Systems Too! Although Commander's full benefit is achieved when giving Windows capabilities to non-Windows applications, such cross-platform operation is not required. Commander is so easy to set up and use that some people use it in pure Windows environments so they don´t have to code even the simplest ActiveX Automation or Command-Line functions. |
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