There are two ways of providing dynamic text data to be printed on your labels. In both cases the text can be “styled”, so different parts of the text will use different fonts, sizes and/or styles.
The first way covers most use cases for text formatting needs, it is simple, and, of cause, has some limitations. The limitation is that it supports line-by-line formatting only. So, each line can have its own formatting, but all characters in the same line will use the same formatting. If this is OK for your application, then here are the steps needed to utilize this method. first, you have to design you label layout/template. The easiest way to design a label is by using DYMO Label software. While designing, type a sample data for a label object, and apply some formatting, on line by line basis, e.g. make the first line bold, save the file, and put it on your server.
Those are manual steps, now we will need some JavaScript. Load the label by using openLabelXml. Now you can set your real data by using setLabelText or, if you need to print multiple labels, by using a LabelSet. You pass a plain string without any formatting to the setLabelText method, and the library will apply line-by-line formatting for you based on the sample data in the label file. For example, if you call setLabelText(‘Will E. Coyote\nACME Birding\n2200 Desert Meadows Way\nLas Vegas, NV 89122’), the output will be like that:
The second way to format the text is by using so called “Text Markup” feature. It is some what more complex than the first formatting method, but in return you have the full control over the font attributes and can do character-by-character formatting. First, you design your label as described above, but you don’t have to specify any sample data. Next you have to construct a “text markup”. A text markup is an xml string contains tags controlling font attributes, plus plain text data. The Supported tags are ones similar to HTML tags: <font>, <b>, <i>, <u>, <s>, <br>. Full xml-schema definition is available here. After you have the markup text, you can print it by using a LabelSet and setTextMarkup method.
var labelSet = new dymo.label.framework.LabelSetBuilder();
var record = labelSet.addRecord();
var textMarkup = '...';
record.setTextMarkup('Text', textMarkup);
label.print('DYMO LabelWriter 450', null, labelSet.toString());
Here is an example demonstrates different formatting capabilities: http://labelwriter.com/software/dls/sdk/samples/js/TextMarkup/TextMarkup.html, and the corresponded JavaScript http://labelwriter.com/software/dls/sdk/samples/js/TextMarkup/TextMarkup.js. Type anything into the “Text to Print” text box and click on any button below. The output should correspond to the button’s caption. The corresponded text markup will be copied to the “Text Markup” text box, so you can examine it without going into JavaScript debugger. Also, you can just type any text markup in the box and print it by clicking on “Print text markup” button. Just make sure it is a correct xml and correct markup. If it is not, a runtime error/exception is thrown.
