Epson IR-320, Техническое справочное руководство

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4-52 Utilities Rev. C
Do not use this tool for the hardware keyboard or it may respond with the wrong keyboard
status. The tool is applicable to the 101/102/106-key keyboards; however, the operation cannot
be guaranteed when the OS is not in Japanese or English.
EPSON OPOS ADK
OLE (Object Linkage and Embedding) is component software that runs on the OS of Win 32-bit
style, such as Microsoft Windows NT 4.0. Depending on how the software components have
been created, the software may be reusable or reversely compatible.
The objective of the OLE POS (“OPOS”) is to use the OLE to standardize the control system
(API) for the peripheral units of the POS. By this standardization, the application and peripheral
unit control software become open and generic. The OPOS standardizes the interface between
the POS application and the device control object, which depends on the device or the
manufacturer. The OPOS also facilitates the transplant of the application and the
reconfiguration of the peripheral devices.
Because of standardization of the peripheral devices, a large part of the work required for the
development of software can be eliminated, and the system can become fully open. As a result,
comparatively small-sized shops that plan to introduce the POS can easily configure an
intelligent, flexible POS system.
OPOS makes it easy to build POS applications that take advantage of the functionality that
Windows has to offer, such as graphics, video, and sound; a user-friendly GUI; and
multitasking.
For information on the installation procedure for the OPOS ADK, see the user’s guide registered
in the \C:\Backup\Oposadk directory.
Creating the Component Software
The POS device needs a control program. The device control object once existed as a part of
monolithic POS application software. Because of this monolithic structure, POS system
designers had to replace or change the entire POS application software to change the device
control object alone when a peripheral device was replaced. This work claimed a lot of time and
money. POS application software developers had to become experts about each manufacturer’s
devices, including functions and command systems, to create a device control object.
With the advent of the PC-POS, however, any external device is now connectable to a PC as long
as the interface (serial, parallel, or whatever) is supported. While the problem with the
compatibility of the hardware was solved in this way, a problem with the software still existed.
The software was not applicable, and the POS application software itself had to be replaced. For
this reason, it was impossible to make the PC-POS fully open in terms of both the hardware and
software.
To solve this problem, the device control object was modularized and made to be independent
of the POS application software. Because only the device control object needs replacement at this
time, the work to replace the POS application software itself when the device was replaced is
simplified. Also, because the original device control object is supplied, the POS application