Creating Minidisc Labels on Linux with a Brother QL-700 Label Printer
I recently bought a label printer for erm... label printing, I guess? I decided to set this up to print some Minidisc labels before moving onto plants. Brother have a great rep for Linux-compatible printers so this should've been easy, right? Right? Right?
Getting The Printer Working
The Brother QL-700 label printer is a thermal printer that uses rolls of labels. It's designed for postal labels but in theory will work with anything. There's a bunch of features, none of which I plan to use. In fact for me it's mostly going to be used for printing badly drawn plant pun labels and postage stuff. When I say the Brother is very Windows-oriented I mean it.
There's a Windows/Mac tool called P-Studio for pro label generation and another called P-Lite. If the printer is in P-Lite mode (signified by an LED under the 'r' in the Brother logo) your printer will not work with Linux. Thankfully there's a button you can push to turn it off.
Next up is CUPS config. The CUPS driver is available either in an RPM or .DEB format, but thankfully there's a PKGBUILD in AUR that gave me sufficient info to build and install the driver with the extra Linux tools it needs. My system tried to somewhat smartly install the printer when initially connected, but this left me in an odd state: I could print but the job would sit there in the queue with no discernible error.
I removed the printer from CUPS and re-added it manually, using the PPD I installed in /opt/brother/PTouch/ql700/cupswrapper/. This time everything worked fine and I was able to print.
Creating Minidisc Labels
I've written before about how I love Minidisc as a music medium. Although music is still released on Minidisc my collection comes almost entirely from transferring previously bought music onto a job lot of previously recorded minidiscs. These often have their own labels and don't always match what's on there. While it's a goldmine of obscure karaoke, Dixie chicks and god only knows what else, I like to know what I'm listening to.
To transfer music to Minidisc I use the amazing Web Minidisc Pro on an MZ-RH1. For labels I use Jae Kaplan's Minidisc Label Maker. I fill out the label information, upload an album cover and download the label.
Currently I'm then putting the resulting label image into the GNU Image Manipulation Program although I'll try to find a better tool as I have a personal preference to avoid using it where practical. Once in the app, I desaturate the album cover, play with the contrast and brightness, do any clean-up needed and print the label.
I'm pretty happy with the results. Although it's only Black and White it's way better than just writing the name on a label with a biro. The nice thing about this workflow is I can do the labels for a few discs at a time then when I'm ready sit down and print them in one run.
Next I need to learn how to adjust the label size as currently it cuts a lot of free label space going to waste, and then see if I can pull data from sources I already have, like album art from music metadata.
I have already tried this but the printer wasn't working. I'd submit jobs and the green printer LED above the power button would flash red. This means the dimensions are not correctly set - just in case you have a QL-700 and are experiencing this.