Notice: This repo is a clone of the one on Dominic Radermacher's website, and he is he author. It is available here (https://github.com/clarkewd/ptouch-print/), with his permission, to help increase visibility of the project and to encourage collaboration and further development.

ptouch

ptouch is a command line tool to print labels on Brother P-Touch printers on Linux.

There is no need to install the printer via CUPS, the printer is accessed directly via libusb.

The tool was written for and tested with the PT-2430PC, but it should also work with the PT-1230PC (untested so far). Maybe others work too (please report USB VID and PID so I can include support for further models, too).

Models in libptouch.c include:

• PT-2420PC
• PT-1230PC
• PT-2430PC
• PT-2730
• PT-2730
• PT-P700 ( see note below about mode switch )
• PT-D450

Further info can be found at: https://mockmoon-cybernetics.ch/computer/p-touch2430pc/

Compile instructions:

./autogen.sh
./configure --prefix=/usr
make

PT-P700:

• As the PT-P700 does not have a toggle switch for the printer mode, you may need to switch the mode first
• If you plug in the PT-P700 and the green light above the PLite button is on, the printer won't be recognized by ptouch. You must hold down the PLite button for ~ 2 seconds and the light will turn off and the system will find the device again.
• This step allowed it to be detected as vid 0x04F9 pid 0x2061 insetad of vid 0x04F9 pid 0x2064
• This allows it to be found, (eg: ./ptouch-print --info) and also puts it into a mode that it can be interfaced with

A Note from Dominic's website

"Dear visitor, currently I have absolutely no time for improvements on this project (my free time currently is about one or two hours PER MONTH)..."

Collaboration

You may still, of course, contact Dominic directly if you'd like. But I think GitHub is easier for collaboration, and he has given me permission to host a clone of his repo here, passing code contributions back to him.