Extension of available raw printing mechanisms

[mike42]

This library currently performs raw printing via a network socket (in Client.php), but not all printers have an Ethernet card.

I develop escpos-php, which is similar to this library, but outputs a different protocol. That project has accumulated a few different PrintConnectors over the years, which wrap different raw printing mechanisms so that they can be used from PHP.

We both use the MIT license, composer for dependency management, and we both need to be able to deliver raw data to printers. I think it would be a positive if we combine our raw printing code and share a dependency.

If I create a new project for PHP raw printing, would you be open to reviewing a pull request which changes zebra to use it?

The specific code changes I would send here would be:

• A composer.json change to add the new connector project
• A documentation change to reflect the availability of more raw print mechanisms
• Replacement of Client so that it becomes an empty NetworkPrintConnector sub-class, avoiding breakage in existing code.
• Moving CommunicatonException out of this repo

And the benefit would be:

• Ability to print to Windows shared printers, CUPS, plus things like USB or serial printers which appear as a file on Linux.

[robgridley]

Hi, Mike.

I'm not sure how I missed this issue. Sorry about that.

I don't have a problem working with you to support your library, but I won't be eliminating my Client or CommunicationException classes. I wrote this library for a specific purpose, and it is used across several of my own projects.

Let me know how you would like to proceed.