A printer for printing on a manually moved print medium. The printer may use thermal or inkjet printing and has user feedback and input. A roller-type position detector enables the printer to be used without a mechanical paper drive mechanism. The printer monitors the print medium as the print medium is propelled through the printer to identify when particular printing fields are aligned to the printhead. The printer then activates the printhead to print image portions in the printing fields. An alternative embodiment of the printer uses a flexible mounting of the printhead. In this embodiment, the paper roll diameter is determined in conjunction with monitoring the rotation of the paper roll to determine the position of the paper without requiring a roller-type position detector.