To aid users in the task of label printing, Avery Dennison offers a host of free (to download) software, including a program for the Mac released late last month. Linux still isn't supported, but that's no matter -- there's more than one open source application for Linux that lets you format text for printing on the whole universe of Avery labels, from DVD covers to business cards. Here's a look at them.

LabelNation

One versatile program written for the express purpose of printing on Avery labels is Karl Fogel's Python-based LabelNation.

It outputs formatted PostScript that you can either save to a file or send directly to the print spooler, if you have a PostScript printer or a print filter that converts incoming PostScript to something that your printer understands. You can print from a database of addresses on a single run, such as for printing a mailing list, and in addition to plain text input it can also take PostScript code -- which means you can print labels with graphics.

Once you have it downloaded and installed (just put the labelnation file in /usr/local/bin), you can get a list of its predefined labels with the --list-types option:

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