Companies that don't have a printing solution must use preprinted forms, barcodes, and labels. Not only are they a costly choice, but oftentimes preprinted forms are not customizable. Barcodes can't be printed on them. And if something needs to be changed on the preprinted stock paper that you have already bought, you must throw it out, along with the money spent on it. CYBRA's MarkMagic is one product that alleviates the limitations of preprinted materials. MarkMagic is a System i printing solution that gives companies the freedom to not only print forms, barcodes, labels, and RFID tags in-house, but also to be the artist of each creation.

Any Way You Want It

CYBRA's MarkMagic is a standalone System i solution that offers more than the standard green-screen functionality. MarkMagic's graphical user interface, JMagic (Figure 1), lets anyone (even for those less experienced with the IBM i) design barcodes, labels, forms, and RFID tags. But what if you prefer the green screen? MarkMagic supplies that too (Figure 2). In fact, the product has three classic i OS interfaces. All four views have the same capabilities, but the classic i interfaces are more developer friendly, whereas the Java-based WYSIWYG JMagic is more user friendly. What's more, MarkMagic supports almost all printers, so the only thing users have to worry about is which printer would work best for their company.

The artist of the printing solutions can choose a brush (i.e., a printing device). Along with the brush, the artist also can select the design format such as barcodes, forms, labels, checks, and even RFID "smart" labels.

A Blank Canvas

After choosing a printer and format, the artist is presented with a blank canvas. In JMagic, the empty canvas looks similar to that of a paint program, where the artist can click a button to add text, boxes, lines, graphics, barcodes, or RFID tags. Above and to the left of the canvas are rulers for aligning fields that have been added to it. In the green-screen Visual Designer, a blank canvas appears also with rulers. The only difference between the two interfaces is the interaction between the user and the canvas. To add a text field with JMagic, the artist merely clicks the text field toolbar button at the top of the window. In the green-screen Visual Designer, the artist uses F6 to display the Select a Field Type menu, which offers a variety of fields from which to choose.

After the addition of a field, a window appears that lets the artist fully customize the field. With a text field, for example, the artist has the option of changing the text that appears and the font type and size it appears in. If the text to be printed depends on a DB2 file (this is called a variable field), that can be specified as well. Because each form may be about a different product or customer, pulling data from the database and filling in text fields help eliminate tedious work from the design process.

Also, MarkMagic lets the artist place barcodes directly on a form — a step that can't be done with preprinted forms. To add a barcode, the artist uses F6 and types a B (in green-screen Visual Designer) or clicks the Add a Barcode Field (in JMagic). There are options for specifying the type of barcode (which is like the font of the barcode known as the symbology), the size of the barcode, and the alignment of the barcode on the canvas.

One of the tricks is to use the Print Preview function while you design your label or form. Doing so takes "What You See Is What You Get" to the maximum when you see not only the text changing on the screen as you page through DB2 records, but the barcodes and graphic images as well.

Printing Your Masterpiece

After the design is complete, the printing begins! Besides MarkMagic's ability to work with almost any printer, the solution has a few other printing tricks up its sleeve. First, MarkMagic can print from spooled files. Similar to how you print database files, you define in a text field's options which spool file to get information from. Then you map the field to a specified spool line and column. Everything within this mapped area will be imported into MarkMagic and printed on the form.

MarkMagic can also make electronic versions of anything created with it. It can make Adobe Acrobat and PDF files so you can email forms, labels, or invoices and save paper.MarkMagic's newest add-on option, MarkMagic OnDemand, lets you post these electronic documents to a web page and create a custom, secure web application for your customers to retrieve their documents (e.g., invoices, statements) online.

Art of the Future

MarkMagic is a printing solution that lets companies control their printing. It eliminates the need for stock paper — or any paper — with its PDF and Adobe Acrobat file converter, and it does so on the IBM i — no Unix or Windows necessary. But MarkMagic offers more. CYBRA saw the wave of the future that is RFID and delivers this nascent technology in the same MarkMagic printing solution with barcodes and forms. No third-party software is necessary. As long as the printer can encode RFID and is supplied with RFID "smart" labels, MarkMagic sends the information to be encoded along with the print instructions. Although some set up is required on all printers to use RFID, once this is done, you're ready to start adding smart tags.

So, if you're tired of the preprinted paper that never looks quite right, or if your company is ready to move to RFID but wants control over other documents as well, then you might want to check out CYBRA's MarkMagic.

Cassandra Deemer is an editorial assistant for System iNEWS.

Solution Spotlight is a feature of System iNews that provides more in-depth coverage of significant System i products. Selections are based on staff perception of the product as significant to the System i market. Source material for Solution Spotlights are user manuals and other documentation provided by product vendors and is not the result of any product testing.

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