For my graduation project we needed the ability to print a couple of bills etc. Printing lines was pretty simple with the LinesPrinter i blogged about a while ago. We had two choices: either implement a specific print method for each module or implement a reusable markup system. Obviously we went for the second option and came up with something alike BBCode. The codes we implemented are

• [b]..[/b] for bold
• [i]..[/i] for italic
• [color=x]..[/color] for color x
• [c]..[/c] for centered text
• [r]..[/r] for right aligned text
• [ll=x]..[/ll] for left aligned text starting from the x-th column at the left
• [lr=x]..[/lr] for left aligned text starting from the x-th column at the right
• [rl=x]..[/ll] for right aligned text starting from the x-th column at the left
• [rr=x]..[/ll] for right aligned text starting from the x-th column at the right

Since the code is written to work on a Graphics2D device you can also render the formatted text on a jpanel etc instead of a printer device. Here is a screenshot of a generated bill (on a jpanel):

Feel free to download, try and improve the rpcode.zip package.