Printing Parcel Postage

TedYoung has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Good Day

Anyone know of a Perl-compatible (in that I don't want to write XS for this) solution for printing US postage. All of the solutions that I have come accross want you, at best, to export all of your data to their dumb little app, and use that to print.

Since my software already printing the mailing label, it would be nice to include the indicium, but I would really like to be able to do it programmatically since we do over a hundered packages a month. I am so tired of stamps.

update: To be honest, I don't think I know exactly what I am looking for. :-) The solution would need to "sell" me the postage as we use it. We have to use a metered solution because we are shipping packages, but we know the exact wieght without a scale. I guess I want something like http://stamps.com or http://usps.com without having a seperate, stand-alone system, or redundant data entry. http://stamps.com offers a SDK, but what it really is, is a client-side activ-x control that gives you the same interface as their normal software.

I just have a feeling that http://amazon.com isn't sitting there printing stamps through some lame web interface.

Thanks!

Ted Young

($$<<$$=>$$<=>$$<=$$>>$$) always returns 1. :-)

Comment on Printing Parcel Postage Download Code

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Re: Printing Parcel Postage by pileofrogs (Priest) on Mar 31, 2006 at 02:12 UTC
Do you need the algorithm that calculates cost based on weight, destination etc..? Or do you need something that tells a printer where to put the dots of ink? Or do you need something that reads the serial input from a scale? --Pileofrogs	[reply]
Re^2: Printing Parcel Postage by nacredata (Sexton) on Mar 31, 2006 at 04:46 UTC
I was presuming the dots of ink question since I've wondered that about things like mailing labels. I had a solution which re-wrote an rtf file but it wasn't very reliable. I think there are some PDF-writing and re-writing modules on CPAN, I was going to try those when I got back around to looking at the question... which is just un-helpful jabber I suppose, sorry.	[reply]
Re: Printing Parcel Postage by hsmyers (Canon) on Mar 31, 2006 at 15:35 UTC
First thing that occurs to me is that 'printing US postage' is directly equivalent to printing money. In other words, you can't do this without the permission of the USPS and I suspect their help. I use stamps.com and I know that they are licensed by the postal service. I'd check with USPS and see what the possibilities are. --hsm "Never try to teach a pig to sing...it wastes your time and it annoys the pig."	[reply]