esc2text extracts text from binary ESC/POS files.
The plaintext output is UTF-8 encoded, and written to standard output.
It operates by reading all of the commands in the input file, and discarding
those which do not contain text or line breaks. Add -v as the last argument
to see all the other commands for debugging purposes.
This utility is included with escpos-tools. See the escpos-tools documentation for installation instructions.
php esc2text.php FILE [ -v ]
$ php esc2text.php receipt-with-logo.bin
ExampleMart Ltd.
Shop No. 42.
SALES INVOICE
$
Example item #1 4.00
Another thing 3.50
Something else 1.00
A final item 4.45
Subtotal 12.95
A local tax 1.30
Total $ 14.25
Thank you for shopping at ExampleMart
For trading hours, please visit example.com
Monday 6th of April 2015 02:56:25 PM
The same binary data, when sent to a printer, renders as below:
$ cat receipt-with-logo.bin > /dev/usb/lp0
The input file used as an example here was generated by escpos-php, and is available here.
This utility will create unformatted plaintext files. Other formats can be accessed
by performing a second conversion via the unoconv and pandoc utilites.
These can produce DOC, HTML, PDF or RTF versions of the same output, among other formats.
In some cases, drivers convert text to a series of image before printing, so there is no
text the ESC/POS file. In this case, esc2text will correctly return a blank text file.
Images can be extracted with escimage and put through a suitable OCR tool.