mike42/escpos-php

This change updates the supported PHP versions, and contains some breaking changes to improve compatibility with newer PHP installs.

Breaking changes to users who are upgrading:

• Support for PHP 7.3. 7.4, 8.0, and 8.1 has been removed. PHP 8.2 or higher is required from this version.
• Source files and public interfaces now use return type hinting, which may require code changes for those who have extended the library in their own projects.

Deprecations:

• The DummyPrintConnector has been marked as deprecated and will be removed in a future release. The functionality is now available as the MemoryPrintConnector. This is a print connector which is used to capture input internally for testing, but is part of the public API.

This change updates the supported PHP versions, and contains some breaking changes to improve compatibility with newer PHP installs.

Breaking changes to users who are upgrading:

• Support for PHP 7.0. 7.1 and 7.2 has been removed. PHP 7.3 or higher is required from this version.
• Source files now use declare(strict_types=1), which will cause errors for callers which are not using the correct scalar types.

Bug fixes:

• Using the GD library to load images would result in an error on PHP 8. This was due to a change to the GD interface from PHP 8.0.
• The example scripts now refer to vendor/autoload.php, so they will work if this repository is checked out and used standalone.
• PHPUnit has been updated to version 9.0.

Breaking changes for developers who are upgrading:

• Support for PHP 5.x and HHVM has been removed. PHP 7.0 or higher is required from this version.
• The intl PHP extension is now required (see docs). This replaces the use of mbstring and iconv, which are no longer used.
• composer is now required to correctly load dependencies, where it was previously optional.
• Printer::text() will now throw an Exception if invalid UTF-8 is supplied. Use Printer::textRaw() if you are encoding text manually.
• Printer-specific sub-classes of CapabilityProfile have been removed (eg. StarCapabilityProfile). Use a named profile with CapabilityProfile::load() instead.
• The API now uses scalar and return type hinting in some places, which makes it more strict than it was previously.

New features:

• Inclusion of new printer profiles from escpos-printer-db.
• gfx-php has been added as a dependency, which allows image processing to work without gd or imagick being present in most cases.
• A new MultiplePrintConnector has been added, which allows developers to route identical print data to multiple printers simultaneously.

Experimental features:

• A new UnifontPrintBuffer, which uses glyphs from a GNU Unifont hex file as an alternative to the on-board printer fonts. See the included unifont-print-buffer.php example for usage.

Bug fixes:

• Added checks where temporary files are created, to give clearer error messages on setups where the temp directory is misconfigured, see #362

New features:

• A RawBT connector and example

Newly tested printers:

• Bixolon SRP-350Plus
• CHD TH-305N
• Elgin i9
• Everycom EC-58
• Gainscha GP-2120TF
• SAM4S GIANT-100DB
• SEYPOS PRP-96
• Solux SX-TP-88300
• SNBC BTP-R880NPIII
• TVS RP45 Shoppe
• Zjiang ZJ-8250

New features:

• Upside-down printing is now implemented #615
• Include updates from escpos-printer-db

Bug and code fixes:

• Modify validation code in WindowsPrintConnector for PHP 7.3 compatibility
• Add to type hints where possible, replace old usages in examples, and correctly label the namespace for some exceptions

Newly tested printers:

• OKI RT322
• ithaca ITherm 280
• Rongta RP80USE
• Sewoo SLK-TS400
• Approx APPPOS80AM
• QPOS Q58M
• HOIN HOP-H58
• Xeumior SM-8330
• Birch PRP-085III
• 3nStar RPT-008
• POSLIGNE ODP200H-III-G

You must have PHP 5.4 or HHVM 3.21 or higher to upgrade to this version.

New features:

• UriPrintConnector helper for initializing connectors based on a URI. Contributed by @evsar3 #314

Bug fixes:

• WindowsPrintConnector on Linux will now use SMB2 due to SMB3 compatibility issues affecting printing to newer Windows versions. Contributed by @1dal #488

Tested on new devices:

• Senor TP-100
• 3nStrat POS-08
• Black Copper BC-85AC
• Nyear NP100
• Star BSC10
• Sicar POS-80
• Bematech-4200-TH
• Xprinter XP-90, XP-58 Series
• Dapper-Geyi Q583P
• Epson EU-T332C

New features:

• Release paper function for Epson TM-U295 #417
• Allow + character in passwords for Windows shared printers #392

Tested on new devices:

• Citizen CT-S310II
• Epson TM-T20II
• Epson TM-T81
• Epson TM-T88II
• Epson TM-U590 and TM-U590P
• Epson TM-U295
• Equal (EQ-IT-001) POS-58
• Metapace T-25
• Nexa PX700
• Orient BTP-R580
• Star TSP100III FuturePRNT
• XPrinter XP-Q20011
• Xprinter XP-80C

This is expected to be the final release in the 1.x series. Newer versions will drop support for some end-of-life PHP versions.