labrat
reddit / emacs

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lstrang · 2022-01-26 16:54

I always dreaded having to print simple file folder labels, which I
need to do a lot.  It would mean going to a Windows or Mac machine,
spinning up the very slow Dymo label making software, getting the GUI
designer right, inserting the label text, printing, and wash-rinse-
repeat.

I wrote a gem to provide a simple command-line program to print labels
from a shell.  As a bonus, it includes some simple elisp to provide
printing the current paragraph from within an emacs buffer as a label.

This is a bit of a hobby project, written as a Ruby gem, but it
eliminated a big hassle for me.

Here is the link:  [labrat](https://github.com/ddoherty03/labrat) or
install the ruby gem labrat.

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jumpUpHigh · 2022-01-26 21:51

I love this.

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deaddyfreddy · 2022-01-26 22:49

Cool, I had some fine time making a piece of ZPL label-generating
software!

But do I get it right, it just generates a PDF file, doesn't it?
Wouldn't an org-file with some latex headers be sufficient?

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unhammer · 2022-01-27 13:18

love the name =D

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lstrang · 2022-01-27 16:28

@deaddyfreddy, yes, it generates a PDF with the Prawn gem.  It might
be nice to try LaTeX as a backend, it's a program I use every day,
though I don't think org exported to LaTeX would give enough control
without a lot of effort.

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deaddyfreddy · 2022-01-27 17:51

> though I don't think org exported to LaTeX would give enough control
without a lot of effort.

I think you can embed any Latex expression in Org (correct me if I'm
wrong). Including any paper/size/font stuff