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glabels: Ready For Prime Time 187

Posted by timothy from the small-business dept.
Joe Barr writes "NewsForge is running a review of glabels. It's still in beta status, but it's ready for prime time now. It knows hundreds of predefined label formats and allows you to design your own templates for custom work. Barcodes, images, just about anything but MP3 tracks can be printed on them. glabels is destined to become one of the most popular native apps for Linux." If you need harder-core barcode support, the excellent kbarcode would probably make a good complement. (NewsForge and Slashdot are both part of OSDN.)
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glabels: Ready For Prime Time More

glabels: Ready For Prime Time

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  • Wimps... (Score:5, Funny)

    by grub ( 11606 ) <slashdot@grub.net> on Tuesday June 29, 2004 @07:00PM (#9566305) Homepage Journal

    ..back in The Day we'd just "cat > /dev/lpt" and do it right the first time. If the client was lucky we'd remove the tractor feed strips off the "cards". Fancy pants, downtown GUIs and pointing and clicking and carousing and hooliganism...

    • Re:Wimps... (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      "offtopic"? Goddamn punks with their 21st century mod points and mice and mice with 4 buttons and a wheel and color and sound...

      • Re:Wimps... (Score:2, Interesting)

        by name773 ( 696972 )
        not me, i'm browsing with links on a 10 year old retired desktop (got it for free :)) that doesn't even have x installed

        it's still functional!

    • Re:Wimps... (Score:4, Funny)

      by Alien Being ( 18488 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2004 @08:47PM (#9567002)
      Quit your whining ;-) We didn't have some fancy /dev/lpt or even an lpt0:. All we had was the printing terminal. Hell, we didn't even need a computer to make address labels, just a loop of punched tape and either a teletype or flexowriter.

    • Re:Wimps... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by torpor ( 458 )

      you haven't lived (as a computer geek) until you've worked on a coding project, 20 hours a day for 5 weeks, sitting in a chilly halon-smelling computer room, with a 128-char daisy-wheel printer chattering away in your ear, printing label print jobs you spooled with 'lp sometextfile' 4 months ago ... having to cat/cut/grep/uniq that same 'sometextfile' whenever the tractor-feed edge tape gets jammed and you only notice because the temperature in your immediate vicinity has risen because the daisy wheel hasn'

  • most popular native apps (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 29, 2004 @07:01PM (#9566316)
    glabels is destined to become one of the most popular native apps for Linux
    Oh yes, because I can't make it through the day without printing labels.

    Either this is a statement about the status of Linux apps, or a comment on the poster's anal retentivness.

    • Business uses (Score:2, Insightful)

      by RogL ( 608926 )
      Have you ever dealt with (non-IT) businesspeople? I've been in offices where every person in sales/accounting/billing had a dedicated label printer on their desk, for shipping labels / packaging / general mail / whatever. Think about what "most popular" means: not "earthshaking", not "technically brilliant"; try reading it as "most commonly used" or "widespread". Yes, some people print labels every 5-10 minutes as part of their job. It's a handy niche to fill.
      • It seems there it is the hardware aspect (the dedicated label printer) that is valuable, not the software application.

        I still can't see a software application that makes labels one of the "most commonly used" Linux applications out there, even if it fills a niche which is part of someone's job.

  • A label maker? (Score:3, Funny)

    by stratjakt ( 596332 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2004 @07:02PM (#9566318) Journal
    This is newsworthy?

    That's what Bart's aunt Selma got him for his birthday. It caused nothing but trouble.

  • Standard in Open Office (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 29, 2004 @07:02PM (#9566319)

    wouldnt it make more sense to package a label printing facility as part of Open Office as apposed to a standalone application ?

    great idea that *nix has this now but these sorts of things have been standard in MSWord for a long time, do i really need to open a specific application (and all the hassle of saving/re-opening) just to print a label or envelope ?

    • Re:Standard in Open Office (Score:5, Informative)

      by prockcore ( 543967 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2004 @07:10PM (#9566383)
      great idea that *nix has this now but these sorts of things have been standard in MSWord for a long time

      Not really. You need Avery to do anything more than wipe your ass with a sheet of labels under Word.

      OOo has label support, it even has more templates than Word... but neither are as complete as Avery.

      This is supposed to compete with Avery.

      • Good timing as I needed to lay out some new business cards, so I gave it a download and a try.

        The package itself seems pretty much flawless, with no crashes or instability detected (prebuilt RPM on SuSE 8.1 with Ximian enhancements.) The only glitch I encountered is that trying to print to a .pdf fails. Print to a postscript file or to a printer and it works fine.

        Much easier to work with than a word processor and label templates. It's not a daily use utility for 99% of the population, but it does it

      • Re:Standard in Open Office (Score:3, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Parent post is just plain WRONG!

        Since at least Office 97, Microsoft Word has had more templates than you can shake a stick at, and the ability to easily create custom ones in a snap. Not to mention a quick google for the ID of the label you are using will get you a template in no time flat.

        Yea, Word isn't free software, but you are serving the entire open source community a grave injustice by flat-out lying about Microsoft products.

    • Re:Standard in Open Office (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Have you tried to use the label printing option in Open Office? I have. My wife asked me to print off 5 pages of labels. Sounds simple right? She needed to print off a bunch of name tags for kids and parents at her soccer club. The names were in a spreadsheet. Still sounds straightforward, right?

      Not.

      I think I spent 1-2 hours banging my head against open office trying to get this to work. It is possibly the clunkiest, craziest, non-intuitive procedure I've yet to come across.

      Compared to that, the d
      • I find glabels very easy to use, and I really like the fact I don't have to fire up a full blown office suite to print some labels, or work on a business card. It's a terrific tool...cheers to the programmers.
    • You're forgetting the *nix philosophy on the role of programs:

      "Do one thing and do it well"

    • wouldnt it make more sense to package a label printing facility as part of Open Office as apposed to a standalone application ?

      Absolutely NOT!!! The last thing we want to do is install a massive bloatware suite when all we need is one specific and well-defined function.

      Open Office has its good points, for those with needs that mirror the many things that it offers. For everyone else, it's a throwback to the integrated packages of the past, and a major pain.

  • Underpromise, Overdeliver (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Farley Mullet ( 604326 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2004 @07:02PM (#9566321)
    glabels is destined to become one of the most popular native apps for Linux.

    This seems like a nice little application, but I don't think you do it any favours by hyping it up so much. Great label-making program, check; most popular native application for Linux? That might be a bit of a stretch

    • Re:Underpromise, Overdeliver (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 29, 2004 @07:04PM (#9566337)
      This just in:

      Label making fever sweeps the nation
      • Tagline seen on the cover of next month's "Linux Today":

        Labelling: It's the new 'blog'!

      • This just in:

        Label making fever sweeps the nation

        Don't I know it.

        At MyCorp, not only does every piece of property have a small bar code sticky label on it, but they've put bar codes on our office doors, too!

        I'm just waiting for the policy announcement about the new employee forehead tattoo...

    • That made me wonder about the maturity of linux as a desktop platform, even more than before.

      I'd just assume there would be a way to print envelopes/labels from linux. Even if it was an OO.o template, or some such. It's a fairly simple task.

      Sad. Wake me when they come up with the calculator or cardfile clones.
      • I'd just assume there would be a way to print envelopes/labels from linux. Even if it was an OO.o template, or some such. It's a fairly simple task.

        gLabels has been around for three years. It might look nicer now and support more labels than it did then, but it isn't as if Linux has gone without a method of making them until now.

      • That made me wonder about the maturity of linux as a desktop platform, even more than before.

        I'd just assume there would be a way to print envelopes/labels from linux. Even if it was an OO.o template, or some such. It's a fairly simple task.

        Sad. Wake me when they come up with the calculator or cardfile clones.

        I always wonder what this kind of people wants with Linux. Linux is what we, the hackers, makes it; what is in Linux is what comes from programming nice things.

        So, what you say is: "Please make L

    • Yeah, the author really thought that the label making industry is going to take over the world. Must I spell it out? H.U.M.O.R. Sheesh, do you want it more explicit? Next time we'll underline the humorous parts for you. Isn't there a "pun-intended" tag somewhere.

      Ok, I'll stop before half of slashdot is my enemy :)

    • I was thinking the same thing. Who the hell uses label making software? Nobody that I know, that's for sure.

      Not to say it's a bad program; I just don't see myself ever using it for anything, ever.
  • as I never get mod points.

    Now I can just print out my own!

    +1, Insightful!
    -2, Cut and Paste Troll
    +3, Agrees with My Post
    -10, Thinks Bush is doing Great Things
    +1.3, Made an original Joke about Soviet Russia
    -4, Rants about the RIAA but still buys CDs
    +42, Post by me, explaining the Meaning of Life.

  • Sorry, I'm still working on those labels (Score:4, Funny)

    by underpar ( 792569 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2004 @07:03PM (#9566331) Homepage
    As a geek girl and former clerk I can say that it's really awesome to have software that gives me time to do things other than work. Labels are the most obnoxious thing to make, too. To quote Homer (guess which one): I hate them SO MUCH!

  • Wrong link (Score:5, Informative)

    by lovemayo ( 674154 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2004 @07:05PM (#9566343)
    its not kbarcode.org, but kbarcode.net [kbarcode.net]

  • barcodes == MP3 (Score:5, Informative)

    by ChipMonk ( 711367 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2004 @07:07PM (#9566355) Journal
    Since a barcode is merely a specialized format for binary data (similar to a hard drive's RLL, in fact), I'm sure it's a matter of time until someone figures out how to transfer audio data to a print medium, for later retrieval via barcode scanner.

    I know a hobbyist magazine back in the '80s used to print entire programs in barcode format. I think it was for the old Radio Shack Model 100 laptop.
    • How about the Cauzin Softstrip [tripod.com]? Never had one myself but always though they were cool... for a (not very long) while, the 'puter magazines of the time were printing their BASIC programs encoded for the Softstrip, saving hours of typing...

    • I'm sure it's a matter of time until someone figures out how to transfer audio data to a print medium, for later retrieval via barcode scanner.

      There was some promising work early on, but the labels kept catching fire, unfortunately.

      [ducks, runs for cover]

    • Erm, a standard bardcode doesn't hold much, considering the MaxiCode (AKA UPSCode) barcode can only hold up to 100 ASCII characters, so you'd need a hellaciously large barcode reader/writer/media to store an entire mp3.
    • When will you GNU/Linux hippies learn! This would be STEALING the music.

      And to top it off, your hippie free software barcode font is probably PIRATED as well!

      http://www.idautomation.com/piracy/illegalfonts . ht ml

      Congratulations! You have found a way to violate at least 2 different copyrights with one crappy inkjet printer!

      [On a more serious note: PDF417 is a 2D barcode format that can encode about 1K. While this isn't enough for a full song, it would be enough for a lo-fi sound bite or brief voice ad
    • There is paperdisk [paperdisk.com] to do exactly such things. Includes redundancy so that you can stain your data prints without losing data (hopefully).

      However, this is an old patented windows crippleware application, therefore not suited for the /. crowd :)

  • Another Win App bites the dust (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Technician ( 215283 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2004 @07:07PM (#9566358)
    That's great. I've been using an inexpensive program that's called Labels Unlimited 2 that did a great job handeling graphics, bar codes, database, and serial number functions. That's one less reason to keep a Win box. Now if only they can get National Geographic Back Roads Explorer and the state series TOPO maps ported...

  • Destined to be the most popular native app? (Score:3, Funny)

    by curiosity ( 152527 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2004 @07:08PM (#9566361) Homepage
    If that's true, I think I see the problem with Linux on the Desktop.

    It's a friggin label maker. Jesus. Why is this on NewsForge, much less the front page of Slashdot. Wasn't there a dupe you could have posted instead?

  • Linux_Rulzorz.lbl (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Psymunn ( 778581 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2004 @07:08PM (#9566365)
    Yeah, i can proclaim my OS suppiriority by... printing up a label.
    And, what's more, the label can mention just how unfeasable it would have been to have it's self created had it's creator not been using everyones favorite GTK based desktop
    Or... you know... maybe the whole linux labeling community is a dead idea before it starts...
    • I gotta know - what exactly is "interesting" about the parent? I can't even tell where the sarcasm stops and the bad grammar begins.

    • Because it's little things like this that make Gnome a viable desktop.

      Printing lables IS one of the things people do with their computers. And in windows most people do it using Word. And while Word is good at a great many things (none of which OO can't do better), it's a truely $h!ty label printer. Why? Because it does things the Windows way. Masive, feature bloated, and overly complicated programs.

      gLables is a simple. It has one function. A function people need. And it does it very well. That's Unix a

  • No mp3s on labels? (Score:4, Funny)

    by mikeophile ( 647318 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2004 @07:09PM (#9566367)
    Damn, that sucks.


    I was so looking forward to dusting off the old CueCat and listening to some tracks with it.

  • "beta" or "ready"? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mi ( 197448 ) <slashdot-2017q4@virtual-estates.net> on Tuesday June 29, 2004 @07:11PM (#9566393) Homepage Journal
    It's still in beta status, but it's ready for prime time

    Sorry, you can't have it both ways. Nope.

  • Uh Oh (Score:5, Funny)

    by gooman ( 709147 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2004 @07:15PM (#9566418) Journal
    I sense great hostility in the crowd...
    Quick! Someone post some SCO news.

  • Mac OS X? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jjh37997 ( 456473 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2004 @07:22PM (#9566458) Homepage
    So where's the native Mac OS X version? Or will it run natively within the Mac OS X compile of GNOME?

  • I like gLabels (Score:5, Informative)

    by steveha ( 103154 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2004 @07:26PM (#9566483) Homepage
    I recently used it to mass-print a bunch of name badges on name badge stock in my laser printer.

    I have also used it for labels; you can print just a few labels from a sheet, by specifying which label to start printing upon. So, if you have a sheet of labels, and you have used up the first 11, you can tell gLabels to start printing labels on the 12th label on the sheet. It's slick.

    Finally, this is just the thing for address labels on a dedicated mini-label printer. I don't have that set up yet, but I intend to soon.

    Someone asked why you can't just use OpenOffice for your labels; I want to have OpenOffice print by default to my laser printer, and gLabels by default print to the mini labels-only printer. I wouldn't object to OpenOffice knowing how to pass labels off to the mini-label printer too, of course.

    steveha
  • 1) emerge glabels
    2) ...
    3) Wooo! Cool!

  • Barcodes? MP3's? time for some self promotion! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Flat Feet Pete ( 87786 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2004 @07:28PM (#9566499) Homepage Journal
    I made this [flatfeetpete.com] to play my mp3's. Description from the site:

    There's two main parts.

    • A set of business-card-sized cards that represent the music album collection.
    • A webcam in a harness that the card can be slotted into.

    Each card is printed sideways with album cover art, artist, title and track listing. A barcode on both sides of the card uniquely identifies it. When inserted the PC analyzes the image to pick out the barcode. The barcode is linked to a playlist, which is played when the card is inserted.

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2004 @07:31PM (#9566511)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Label Making Itch (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Eberlin ( 570874 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2004 @07:31PM (#9566517) Homepage
    I must admit, I never had the itch to make labels in linux. Not that big of a fan, really, but I do see the need for it. (labels, that is)

    People will dismiss this project as a pointless waste of time, but I do believe it has its merits. If nothing else, think of it as something shiny to attract new users...or at least give them more of a cushion when they switch OS. (you don't usually switch because of apps as much as you DON'T switch because of a lack of apps)

    We've seen lots of craptastic freeware/shareware stuff for Windows. Heck, back when I watched TechTV more, they had free files featured to do anything you didn't want to do to begin with. All I'm saying here is that it's a Good Thing(TM) to have apps created for linux.

    Give us a GUI that does a batch mogrify on a folder of images. Give us more cute little penguins dancing on the screen. Give us something that does random "at" jobs to play random soundbytes to annoy others. Give us Elf Bowling. Give us whatever you fancy to write.

    In the end, hack away to your heart's content. Write code, give code, learn from code. I can't look any of you coders in the eyes and say "you're wasting your time." Instead I say keep up the good work and keep churning good code.
    • It may be pointless to some, but when it's capable of taking over from the proprietary software at my work, that'll be 20,000 of savings to you, buddy. And maybe I might finally get a pay rise (woohoo). And it'll crash less often than Windows 95, and I won't be standing there waiting for computers to reboot all day.

  • Very useful to the right people (Score:5, Insightful)

    by strider3700 ( 109874 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2004 @07:40PM (#9566566)
    I see lots of jokes about barcodes software and how ground breaking it is being made here. It's obvious that the people making those jokes don't work in retail software.
    I write Point of sale and inventory management software and good easy handling of barcodes is a huge thing with customers, even if it is relatively boring software wise. Programs like this may seem like nothing but they will go a long way towards linux acceptance in key non server locations.

    RFID may be the new hotness but barcodes still rule the retail world.

  • What I need is a *reader* (Score:4, Insightful)

    by no_such_user ( 196771 ) <jd-slashdot-20071008@@@dreamallday...com> on Tuesday June 29, 2004 @07:42PM (#9566576)
    Printing labels is the easy part. Reading them is another story. In a perfect world, I'd be able to use a run-of-the-mill webcam to read barcodes put in front of it in any direction. While there are a few commercial apps which do this, they're expensive and (after playing with a couple demos) not all that accurate.

    If anyone has any leads on a good OSS (or even just cheap -- this is for personal use) solution, please post!
  • I made my own template for oodraw for Meritline Matte CD/DVD Labels [meritline.com]. They work.

    Sigh. I guess I'm going to have to sit down and make my own templates for these as well. Does glabels support vertical retangular stickers as well as round CD stickers on the same sheet?

  • I hope that it improved (Score:4, Informative)

    by DeadSea ( 69598 ) * on Tuesday June 29, 2004 @08:10PM (#9566742) Homepage Journal
    When I last tried glabels a few months ago it has some pretty serious image quality problems. The templates were plentiful and well defined. The editing was intuitive and easy. However I could never get the images to come out printed well.

    The problem seemed to be two-fold:

    1. Image scaling seemed to be done using linear interpolation. Sorry, but that doesn't cut it for anything that should have presentation. All the lines come out with jaggies. Use bi-cubic please.
    2. Printing was done at 72dpi. Hello, my printer is 1200 dpi, can you please take advantage of it?
    In my experience, it did a great job of easily producing poor quality labels. Anybody know if these issues have been resolved in the current version?

    • Re:I hope that it improved (Score:5, Funny)

      by Trogre ( 513942 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2004 @08:43PM (#9566985) Homepage
      Printing was done at 72dpi. Hello, my printer is 1200 dpi, can you please take advantage of it?

      You're getting dpi and dpi confused.

      Your 1200dpi printer can only print black (or CMY) dots on a (usually) white background. You see, it needs to use all those 1200 dots per inch to render halftones, so that if you stand back far enough an area will look kind of like the approximated colour and not just a collection of dots.

      These labels are formatted at 72 dpi. That's 72 full-colour 24-bit fully-toned dots per inch, not a collection of dots that differ only in size.

      There is a formula somewhere that converts perceived dpi to perceived dpi, but I can't recall it...

  • An easy way to print out those "Powered by Linux" Stickers!

  • Just as well... (Score:3, Funny)

    by curne ( 133623 ) <curne&curnomatic,dk> on Tuesday June 29, 2004 @08:28PM (#9566883) Homepage
    just about anything but MP3 tracks can be printed on them

    Just as well. I wouldn't use it if it supported MP3 and not Ogg Vorbis... :-)
  • I guess if they are looking for MS standards it is ready for primetime :)
    No but really, I did try it to do a business card. It works pretty good. It is a nice simple interface with not to much garbage. Everytime I would unselect grid under the view menu it would crash though. Did it everytime.

  • Works like a charm (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Starky ( 236203 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2004 @09:07PM (#9567107)
    There are many /.ers that are wondering what the big deal is. The big deal is that this is one of those simple applications you don't realize you need until you need it. Then you realize that you really need it.


    After I recently finished my Ph.D., I put together over 70 job market packets. For both appearances and efficiency, I needed to generate labels by the dozen.


    Much to my surprise, there was an ebuild of gLabels for Gentoo [gentoo.org]. Even more to my surprise, even though it's in beta, it worked flawlessly. The interface was so well done that I never even needed to look for help files.


    Kudos to the gLabels team!

  • You don't get it. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by iantri ( 687643 ) <{iantri} {at} {gmx.net}> on Wednesday June 30, 2004 @12:16AM (#9568240) Homepage
    For those who are saying "Bah! What good is this? Just use OpenOffice," you don't get it.

    OpenOffice (nor Corel Wordperfect or MS Word) are acceptable substitues for a real label making program -- have many Slashdotters ever bothered to try and print out CD labels or covers/trays to pre-scored stock (like the Avery media available)? Futzing around with templates in Word Processors sucks -- they are designed for linear text. Publishing apps are a little better, but there is nothing like the right tool for the job.

    A program like Avery DesignPro or Surething CD Labeller for Windows makes producing such things very quick and painless.. it is good that this sort of thing is now available under Linux.

    The reason (well, one of them at least), that Linux lacks as a desktop is BECAUSE of the lack of useful tools like this; answers like "You don't really need a (label-making program, greeting card maker, etc.), just use OOo" or "You don't need a WYSIWYG HTML editor, just use vi" completely miss the point.

    BTW, I, for one, could really use a good greeting card program, like Sierra Print Artist. Does any such thing exist?

  • ...not to use the term "destiny" in the same contsruct as "invention"?

    "...glabels is destined to become one of the most popular native apps for Linux..."

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