Star Micronics 4111 Printer User Manual


 
Two importantdetailsmake PCL commands. First, allEscape sequencesend
with a capital letter. If you don’t make the last character uppercase, your
printer won’t know when the Escape sequence ends and will treat following
characters as part of the same command.
Second, in PCL commands each number or character you put after the
<ESC? code is an actual ASCII symbol.
For example, the PCL command that sets the right margin to column 65 is:
<ESC> &a 65 M
which you would code in BASIC as:
10 LPRINT CHR$ (27):
“&a65M”
That command sends your printer the symbols “6” a~d “5”, which its
program interprets as the column number.
4.1.2 Combining Escape sequences
Later in this chapter we describe one way to select a font, byjust specifying
what font attributes you want, such as bold or proportional spacing. If you
select a font by specifying every one of itsattributes, you can be certain that
you’re selecting successfully. But it could mean a fair bitof repetitivetyping
each time you chooseafont.This appliesto other commands too, notjust font
selection.
Here’s a way you can save yourself a few keystrokes: type in those
commands that have the same command-category prefix as just one long
Escape sequence. To combine commands this way, type the <ESC> and
command-category prefix just once, and capitalize only the last command
character.
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