LabelNation: a command-line label-printing program

LabelNation is a command-line program for making labels: address labels, business cards, or anything else involving regularly-arranged rectangles on a printer-ready sheet. It is for users who are comfortable dealing with text- and option-based configuration, as opposed to a graphical user interface.

LabelNation is free / open source software, written in the Python 3 programming language, and licenced under the GNU General Public Licence (GPL).

• Download full distribution (includes examples):

  • labelnation-__VN__.tar.gz (POSIX: GNU/Linux, *BSD, macOS, other UNIX)
  • labelnation-__VN__.zip (Windows ZIP file)

  Or download just the individual file you need:

• labelnation standalone program
• csv_to_ln helper program
  (NOTE: This helper is now obsolete — csv_to_ln is no longer needed now that labelnation can natively read comma-separated value (CSV) input. However, we continue to offer it for those still using older versions of LabelNation.)

• Read the complete documentation

• Check out or browse the latest sources using Subversion

• Grab the Arch Linux package made by Giorgio F. Gilestro.
  (we welcome packages for other distributions too)

Overview

Here's how it works: you tell LabelNation what text you want on each label. You can specify plain lines of text, or even arbitrary PostScript code. You also tell it what kind of labels it should print for. LabelNation takes all this information and produces a PostScript file, which you then send to your PostScript printer (or through a filter such as GNU GhostScript). Of course, there must be a sheet of peel-off labels in the paper tray. Such sheets are widely available at office supply stores. Two companies that offer it are Avery Dennison and Maco. This is not a recommendation nor an endorsement; Avery and Maco are simply the names I've seen.

LabelNation does automatic font resizing to fit all the lines of text on the label, supports the usual accented characters (á, à, ó, etc, from ISO 8859-1).

Supported Labels

LabelNation has built-in knowledge of the following standard label types: