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Star Micronics 4111 Printer User Manual

1. 106 107 108 g ra cg Es cal 111 127 110 F 141 Symbol Name ID Number ECMA 94 Latin 1 ON 6 254 255 233 234 235 208 210 211 217 218 219 222 223 194 195 207 185 186 187 201 202 203 140 156 172 236 252 141 157 221 237 253 191 178 179 224 129 145 161 177 193 241 226 227 132 148 164 180 196 Er 5 134 150 166 182 198 214 230 24 176 192 170 171 175 160 162 163 144 146 147 154 155 158 159 130 131 142 143 ES 137 153 ES 152 168 184 200 216 232 7 135 151 167 183 199 _ 215 231 247 142 Symbol Name ID Number Swedish 3 s zd prx 112 ISO 11 0S 97 113 gt pns NES rx Drs ral 100 5 69 101 102 103 104 zm 105 106 107 EX 44 60 ES um 108 109 110 ra 19 143 Symbol Name ID Number US ASCII OU 96 12 cx 13 EXT EXE
2. 15 i 122 2 66 98 114 99 15 ral rs V 2 100 101 103 104 105 108 c ng ra rx re rx LP rg rs 109 110 F p pal re ung 151 Symbol Name ID Number ISO IRV 2U cx al rx 11 1 1 1 re 2 4 110 A pP pi 2 ERN 15 131 791 1 95 127 EXER 19 ETE 67 115 EUREN 100 116 SES 101 _ 117 oe eae 102 __ 118 d 221 103 119 HIM Emm 107 123 28 __ 44 60 108 124 109 125 EN ape al 106 8 rs rz 104 120 d es 105 121 152 Symbol Name ID Number Swedish ISO 10 35 B B B o cd rm 112 5 gt 115 Em mm 100 101 nf C ral ri Tu L rs rs Sr rg 102 103 104 105 A EM 90 106 107 108 lt rore rs
3. Don t be afraid to use white space White space relieves eye fatigue and looks more attractive 35 3 4 3 Optional fonts Many optional fonts available for your Star LaserPrinter 4 complement its internal fonts These can give you more variety in symbol sets spacing font height style and stroke weight To your Courier fonts for example you might add italics and bold legal or math symbol sets and sizes ranging from 7 to 14 points Optional fonts offer different typefaces too Ask your Star Micronics dealer about cartridges or disks for the following Prestige fonts Letter Gothic fonts H Gothic fonts Roman fonts Presentation fonts Optical Character Reader fonts Line drawing Bar codes 3 4 4 Using cartridge fonts To gain access to a font on a cartridge 1 Slide the cartridge you want into the slot on the front of the printer 2 Use either the control panel menu or a command from your computer to select the font you want Note Do not insert or pull cartridges out of the printer while the DATA lamp is ON An interesting note about default cartridge fonts Say you have selected on the contro panel menu a cartridge font as your default font Later you turn off the printer If you slip the cartridge back in before you turn on the printer again that font will still be your default font 3 4 5 How to download fonts To download fonts from computer disk you ll need more than a small 64K microcomputer We
4. ESC amp f n Y For example say you want to delete a macro numbered 80 You would first select that macro with the command lt ESC gt amp f 80Y Then you would delete it with the Macro Control command lt ESC gt amp f 8X as described below 4 9 2 Macro Control The Macro Control command performs several jobs for you such as defining running and deleting macros To manage macros you send the following command ESC amp fn X For you enter a number from 0 zero to 10 to specify what macro control function you want perform These functions are described in the following table 93 0 zero 1 FUNCTION Start defining macro Creates a new macro with the last specified macro number This macro will be temporary to make it perma nent use lt ESC gt amp f 10X after your definition The printer will make a macro of the sequence of commands that follow this one until it gets the command to stop defining the macro Stop defining macro Execute macro This option makes the printerrun the last specified macro changing printer parameters according to what its com mands say The printer parameters are those you might also set from the control panel When the macro is done the print position will be just where it was before you ran the macro macro This option also makes the printer run the last specified macro But before it runs the macro it saves the current parameters and t
5. NO rm you make the printer first sound its bell most people call it a beeper and then print the self test Generally when you send a control or Escape code it stays active until you deactivate it Most programming languages and some versions of BASIC let you treat the printer as a file to which you can send data When you write a program with one of these languages you open the printer file print into it and then close the file when you re done This programming jargon sounds funny if you re not used to it but it works A few programming languages let you send commands to the printer a third way Applesoft BASIC is one With it you can switch between printer output and screen output 1 2 8 Printer emulations Your Star LaserPrinter 411 responds to the same escape sequence commands that the Hewlett Packard LaserJet III printer uses Macros are single control codes you can define yourself which do the work ofa whole long series of printer commands If you are a programmer you will be happy to hear the Star LaserPrinter supports up to 99 macros at once 11 CHAPTER Controlling Your Printer You can control your Star LaserPrinter 4 in two ways either through control panel parameters or through software commands In this chapter we will consider printer controls mostly from the perspective of the control panel 2 1 PRINTER PARAMETERS 2 1 1 The control panel T
6. Sit LuserPrinter 4 lll APPLICATIONS MANUAL Trademark Acknowledgements LaserPrinter Star Micronics Co Ltd PageMaker Aldus Corporation Applesoft Apple Computer Inc Bitstream Bitstream Inc Canon Canon Inc HP LaserJet Hewlett Packard Company LaserControl Insight Development Inc IBM PC International Business Machines Corp Century Schoolbook Linotype Corporation Lotus 1 2 3 Lotus Development Corporation MS DOS Microsoft BASIC Windows Word Microsoft Corporation MultiMate Multimate International WordPerfect WordPerfect Corporation Ventura Publisher Xerox Corporation NOTICE All rights reserved Reproduction of any part of this manual in any form whatsoever without STAR s express permission is forbidden The contents of this manual are subject to change without notice Allefforts have been made to ensure the accuracy of the contents of this manual at the time of press However should any errors be detected STAR would greatly appreciate being informed of them The above notwithstanding STAR can assume no responsibility for any errors in this manual Copyright 1992 Star Micronics Co Ltd PREFACE About this manual This Star LaserPrinter 4 Applications Manual gives you the information need to program the Star Micronics LaserPrinter 41 Why would you read this book Most people using a laser printer just run software packages with built in printer drivers which loo
7. position the eights position and so on In binary each position is worth only twice that of the position to its right And we only need two symbols 0 zero and 1 one to show the values that may be in any position So in binary we get numbers that look like 1010 or 10001100 The hexadecimal system is made of base sixteen numbers Hexadecimal is positional like the other counting systems And each higher position is worth sixteen times as much as the position to its right We need sixteen different symbols to show all the possible values one hexadecimal digit could have We can use our decimal system s ten symbols but we ve had to borrow a few more from our alphabet to get all the symbols we need In hexadecimal therefore you can have a number that looks like 2C7C or even FACE Here s how the decimal binary and hexadecimal number systems compare Decimal Binary Hexadecimal Decimal Binary Hexadecimal 0 0000 0 8 1000 8 1 0001 1 9 1001 9 2 0010 2 10 1010 3 0011 3 11 1011 B 4 0100 4 12 1100 5 0101 5 13 1101 6 0110 6 14 1110 E 7 0111 7 15 1111 The important thing to realize is that there s more than one way to show the same numeric value Computer programmers for example occasionally use the hexadecimal system because it s so compact Programmers often just say hex This binary number 101001011111110100110111111011010010110100001001 looks quite abittidier when itis written as A5 FD 37 ED2
8. um 109 sal pm 126 31 79 95 111 F 153 ID Number Symbol Name 4S ISO 16 Portuguese 21 5 23 x 5 9 56 11 01 121 39 1 2 9 425 s wN 4 4 4 A o o Q wo 1 3 4 3 154 Symbol Name ID Number Portuguese ISO 84 55 BELSESESENXENEAESES cd cel 112 5 50 66 182 98 ju 93 is 100 101 25 69 rs 5 rg 102 103 104 e 105 9 r rz Em 106 x Dm c 90 107 108 44 60 109 110 A EE 09 gt 155 Symbol Name ID Number Spanish ISO 85 65 2 2 98 r3 rs 115 rel peal rae 100 _ 116 69 101 117 Ene ee 86 102 118 7 12 9 ss 7 87 7 104 2 peu 57 rg 105 121 A ES 90 106 122 107 60 108 124 1
9. you enter a pitch code from the following table CHARACTERS PER INCH PITCH CODE n 10 cpi pica 0 zero 16 66 cpi condensed 2 Font height The height of the characters you print is measured in point sizes The Star LaserPrinter 4 provides fonts in 6 7 8 5 10 12 14 16 18 24 and 36 point sizes If the font height you specifically ask for is not available the printer will select the font with the size closest to your request To select font height for the primary font use the following command For n enter the font height in points that you want lt ESC gt sn V To select font height for the secondary font send this command lt ESC gt s n V Style Style defines whether your text is printed in italics or upright the way these words are Send this command to select the style you want for the primary font ESC sn S in which for n you enter 0 if you want normal upright text or 1 if you want italics 70 To select style for the secondary font just reverse the parenthesis and use the same numbers lt ESC gt 8 Remember that style is a relatively low priority attribute If a particular font satisfies all higher priority attributes but doesn t come in the style you want you ll get that font without your style Stroke weight The weight of a font defines how lightly or boldly it prints You can be flexible about stroke weight The following command gives you arange of 15 degrees o
10. 82 MEANING 0 description length 1 blank 2 always 14 3 always 1 4 orientation 5 blank 6 7 left offset blank space to left of character 8 9 top offset blank space above character 10 11 character width 12 13 character height 14 15 print position travel proportional spacing only The bit map of the character is just the pattern of dots in the character starting at the top left of its cell You work your way across the cell and down to the bottom right giving each dot a value of 0 if it s not to be printed and 1 if it is Then you group those dots as 8 bit bytes 5 Permanent or temporary The last step in downloading your own font is to make the font permanent or temporary using the Font Control command described earlier The com mand lt ESC gt c 4 F will allow the font to be erased when you reset the printer But the command lt ESC gt c 5 will keep your font available even after you reset the printer 83 4 7 RASTER GRAPHICS The Star LaserPrinter 4 offers raster graphics sometimes called bit mapped graphics which specify each dot in a graphics pattern Be aware though that adding graphic elements always slows up printing with laser printers The following steps should be performed in the order shown when printing raster graphics 1 Define the resolution 2 Set the orientation of the graphic image 3 Issue the command to start graphics 4 Issue the command to set the
11. And second the lowercase L is practically identical to the number one 1 versus Because lowercase L is used in many command descriptions we ll use the character 7 to avoid confusion The Star LaserPrinter Operations Manual This manual is the companion to Star LaserPrinter Operations Manual that came with your printer A laser printer is a fairly complex tool that requires care and delicate handling So to use this Applications Manual best make sure you understand that Operations Manual first Your Operations Manual holds essential information about the LaserPrinter such as how to unpack and set up your laser printer e connect the Star LaserPrinter 4 to your computer s serial or parallel port link the LaserPrinter 4 into a network of several computers configure the LaserPrinter 4 to your needs with variables such as paper size and speed of data transfer load paper and the toner cartridge operate the panel switches and display e run the LaserPrinter self test look after your printer to keep it in peak condition TABLE OF CONTENTS 1 Getting to know Your Star LaserPrinter 41 2 222 14 1 1 1 Star LaserPrinter 4 Hardware 1 1 2 Star LaserPrinter 411 Software esse 5 2 Controlling Your Printer eee eee 13 2 1 Printer Parameters 2 ooi rette e PERO n 13 2 2 Controlling the Printer 1
12. Scanning mirror Semiconductor laser diode Photosensitive drum As the laser scans it draws the page map stored in your printer s memory Wherever a light pulse strikes that tiny part of the drum drops to a neutral electrical charge That spot then attracts fine toner powder as the drum rotates past the powder compartment As the drum rotates further it meets the paper The paper itself is negatively charged by passing by a fine corona wire Since opposite charges attract the negative paper clings to the positive drum Then heat and pressure from a roller melt or fuse the dots of toner onto the paper precisely reproducing the image Finally the paper slides into the output bin The paper usually comes out face down so it stacks in the correct sequence 1 2 STAR LASERPRINTER 41 SOFTWARE 1 2 1 Binary and hexadecimal arithmetic If youalready know what hexadecimal numbers are you can skip this section and go ahead to read about ASCII The decimal number system with which we re all familiar is a positional counting system There s the ones position the tens position the hundreds position and so on Each higher position is worth ten times more than the position to the right of it since the decimal system uses the base of ten Moreover we need ten symbols to show the actual values that may be in each position The binary system is positional too There s the ones position the twos position the fours
13. ideal for spreadsheets An extended face particularly on a dot matrix printer goes by several names expanded enlarged or double width printing No matter what it s called extended print is wider than it is high and can be fairly effective in page headings Italic characters sometimes called oblique are slanted Ordinary upright characters are often called roman Your Star LaserPrinter 411 comes with abuilt in upright Courier typeface Moreover from any of the Star LaserPrinter 41175 built in typefaces you can select a subset of upright symbols called Roman 8 A font is a complete set of characters in a particular size and typeface In the world of laser printers the three variables mentioned above weight width and style are a few font attributes sometimes called font charac teristics Let s consider three more attributes font height spacing and pitch 3 1 2 Font height The baseline is the invisible line upon which characters of type sit Since the first letter blocks were made of lead alloy the distance from one baseline to the next is called eading pronounced ledding Type itself is measured from the top of an ascender the part extending up in the b or k for example to the bottom of a descender the down stroke of the y or q The measurements used to describe fonts are points and picas derived from the marks and letters in medieval church almanacs There are 12 points to the pica
14. one CR will also generate a lt LF gt but lt LF gt and FE stay the same 2 lt or FF will produce a CR too CR by itself won t change 3 CR generates a lt LF gt too and either lt LF gt or FF produces a CR After you send the command lt ESC gt amp 2 G for example every time the printer gets a Line Feed command it will move the print position down and over to the start of the line When it gets a Form Feed the printer will also move the print position back to the left 4 4 16 Autowrap One nice thing we get used to with a word processing program is not having to worry about words going past the right margin We don t have to listen for that typewriter bell at the margin any more This command does pretty much the same thing your word processing program does The important difference is that it does not wrap words When you turn on Autowrap if you send too many characters for a line the laser printer prints the overflow on the next line If Autowrap is on when the printer gets a character that would print beyond the right margin it returns the print position for that character back to the left and one line down Carriage Return and Line Feed The Autowrap command works like a toggle switch ESC amp 5 nC If for you enter 0 zero then this wrap around mode will apply But if for you put one this automatic wrapping of characters will not happen The default if you
15. 24 stroke weight 25 typeface 81 3 Positioning each character in your font Before you download each character you have to tell the printer where in its font table to put it You indicate where by sending this command ESC c n E For you put the decimal number between 0 and 255 of the position in the font table where you want your character stored Your printer s font table is just like the ASCII table Before you send each character say g you have to say where you want to put it In the ASCII table g is at decimal position 103 So you send this command ESC 103 E And immediately after it you send the bits that make up the character 9 4 Describing each character in your font The next step is to describe each of your characters mapping where you want each dot to go Send this command before each character ESC sn W For n you enter the number of bytes you ll be sending after this command to describe and map your character Sixteen bytes are needed for the description the bit map takes as many bytes as you ve put into each character cell perhaps two or three hundred bytes As with the font header each byte in the character description is a number sent as the symbol at that position in the ASCII table Coding character descriptions is tricky too so again we recommend you ask your Star Micronics dealer for help The table below shows what the bytes in the character description mean
16. Q2 is the largest which is contained in the rectangle whose diagonal is P1 P2 e if the plotter coordinates of 01 and Q2 are and xq2 yq2 then xq2 xmin xmax yq2 ymin ymax if the two rectangles do not coincide if abs xql xq2 abs xpl xp2 then yp bottom 100 abs yq yq2 and left is disregarded if abs yql yq2 abs ypl yp2 then left 100 abs xgl xq2 and bottom is disregarded If type parameter is 2 SC defines point factor scaling the second form of the command is used left and bottom are not used xmin ymin become the user coordinates of P1 and the user coordinates of P2 are set to xmin xp2 xp1 xfact ymin yp2 1 Without parameters this command eliminates scaling and sets the user coordinate system to the plotter coordinate system If there are less than 4 exactly 6 or more than 7 parameters this command is ignored If xmin is the same as xmax or if ymin is the same as ymax or if xfact or yfact is 0 the command is ignored When appropriate the scaling defined by SC has priority over that obtained from the ratio size of picture frame plot size 105 5 4 VECTOR GROUP The information in this section enables you to achieve the following results in your programs e Use absolute and relative coordinates when plotting e Draw lines arcs and circles e Encode c
17. and almost exactly 6 picas 72 points to the inch Laser printers for computers measure font height in points On laser printers the white space above ascenders and below descenders depends on how the ine is defined so the line corresponds to leading This type you re reading has a font height of 12 points and is spaced a little less than 5 lines per inch 28 The o has been kerned The font height 24 points is measured closer to the f from ascender to descender A font is a complete set of 5 Ascender characters in a particular size and sew Proportional zs spacing Leading is the baseline to baseline measurement 3 1 3 Font spacing and pitch You probably first heard the word pitch in connection with typewriters Typewriters normally use monospaced spacing they give each character the same amount of space on the line About half the fonts available for laser printers use monospaced spacing too Pitch is always expressed as so many characters per inch Ten pitch for example means a font with ten characters in each inch of the line Typesetters for centuries have used two special sizes of type for most text Elite characters are 10 points high and print 12 characters per inch And pica characters are 12 points high and pitched at 10 characters to the inch You ll often run across these monospaced font sizes in the laser printing world Ideally each character in a word should nestl
18. relative to the labeling direction defined by the DI or DR commands The text path set by DV is not affected by changes in 1 and P2 121 0 Withina label each character begins to the right of the previous character This is a horizontal text path unless altered by DI or DR Within a label each character begins below the previous character This is a vertical text path unless altered by DI or DR Within a label each character begins to the left of the previous character This is a horizontal text path unless altered by DI or DR 3 Within a label each character begins above the previous character This is a vertical text path unless altered by DI or DR The ine parameter specifies the location of each character with respect to the preceding character relative to the labeling direction defined by DI or DR commands The is 0 the normal line feed function with respect to text path direction is selected The ine is 1 the reverse line feed function with respect to text path direction is selected Extra space command ES width height This command allows the character and line spacing to be changed The values are added to or subtracted from the font parameters This remains in effect until the next ES command or the printer is reset Select primary font command FI font id This corhmand allows the selection and use as the standard or primary font any font to which an ID has been assigned For
19. 122 sources for 33 font selection 34 61 63 font storage 30 41 font style commands See style com mands form feed command 23 58 G GL 2 commands 97 125 graphics 84 92 97 127 pattern 87 92 raster 84 87 vector 97 127 hexadecimal arithmetic 5 6 HEX DUMP parameter 19 51 horizontal motion commands 51 53 55 horizontal motion index See HMI horizontal print position 51 53 55 1 initial setting 15 interface parameter 14 16 18 internal fonts 2 30 31 italics See style commands kerning 29 labels 22 landscape orientation See font orien tation layout parameter 14 22 24 leading 28 left margin commands 48 line depth commands 52 line feed command 57 Line Printer font 2 30 line spacing commands 51 line type command 115 lines 25 28 IM Macro Control command 93 95 macros 11 93 95 margin commands 48 49 memory management 39 40 monospacing 25 29 MS DOS 10 16 39 166 Nj networks 40 number of copies command 44 0 ON LINE button 13 optional fonts 2 36 orientation See font orientation outline fonts 32 LP page design 35 page formatting commands 20 25 46 50 page length commands 46 47 page orientation See font orientation paper 21 22 continuous form 20 paper feed parameter 14 20 22 paper size 20 paper weight 21 parallel interface 3 16 parameters 13 26 98 character 25 26 GL 2 98 page 22 24 prin
20. 21 This command draws the edge of a wedge of a circle with its center at current cursor position A positive negative radius causes the positive negative x axis to be the reference for the sweep angle Positive start and sweep angles are measured counterclockwise from the reference axis A wedge whose sweep angle is 360 degrees or greater is drawn as a circle with no line connected to the center If the sweep angle is zero it is a single straight line from the center to the starting point This command clears then draws to the polygon buffer Fill polygon command FP This command uses the even odd rule to fill the polygon currently in the polygon buffer The fill type is the one currently selected points are used whether stored with the pen up or down The contents of the buffer are used b t not changed or deleted This command is ignored if a previous PM RA RR or WG command caused the polygon buffer to overflow and no other command cleared it 111 Polygon mode command PM mode Mode 0 clears the polygon buffer and enters the polygon mode in which the following commands can be used AA AR AT DF IN PA PD PE PM2 PR PU PR Reset command ESC E can also be given The polygon stored using these commands can be edged using EP or filled using FP once the polygon mode has been left PM2 The pen location at the ime PMO is issued becomes the first point in the buffer Mode 1 clos
21. 4 EIDEM 11 99 sa ral 100 116 6 22 cx cx 102 __ 118 69 101 117 39 103 119 120 104 121 105 mm 107 123 c 60 108 124 122 106 58 ra 109 125 126 110 pr ee 111 127 F ead mura 144 Symbol Name ID Number Norwegian 150 61 1 1 p rat rs S 1 4 102 103 Auc rs 105 26 42 58 90 104 106 c rm reb 109 L ral ral rd ral rl nz 145 Symbol Name ID Number ISO UK 1E pu zi ra 110 pa tao psi 125 F Ea cal pel 127 N n e Ur e o w a N N lt D lt ex ex a 146 Symbol Name ID Number French ISO 69 1F 100 L rd ng wm 3 wm N Age 110 5 pl 147 Symbol Name ID Number Germ
22. ES c rg 123 107 125 109 rs prs a 126 F 137 Symbol Name ID Number HP German 06 EN 16 p 112 8 m 110 106 122 um 5 pal rid pm 1 pes pra 49 13 2 50 66 98 99 15 100 116 ERN 101 __ 117 rs f 102 __ 11 T3 103 19 r 104 120 105 _ 121 138 Symbol Name ID Number Italian ISO 15 01 5 2 2 ex 100 101 102 103 105 107 EX 44 60 Emm 108 109 110 rg rm 15 131 a 79 95 u 127 139 Symbol Name ID Number JIS ASCII OK wm a a m iE 6 Emm 86 1021 118 107 123 44 60 92 108 124 pz cal p 105 121 15 31 47 6 79 95 111 27 140 Symbol Name ID Number ECMA 94 Latin 1 ON 1 ma i mn a 49 66 98 114 100 U 21 37 85 al Em 115 px rs riw ita re DET 101 102 104 105 c pal rs
23. Y for yes After PCLPFM has made the font data file with your word processor open the Windows file called WIN INI and key in the font defaults you want to apply At the section referring to the HPPCL printer driver insert the APPNDWIN INI file you created earlier That s it From now on your Century Schoolbook fonts will appear on the print menus of all your Windows applications With both examples how you use the fonts depends on your applications software As you know sending commands to change fonts will probably require some experimenting be patient These commands are described in the following chapter 38 The process of downloading a font you ve designed yourself is not so straightforward As you can only do this creating and downloading fonts is described further in chapter 4 3 4 8 Hints Managing memory Printing fancy stuff can be quite cumbersome for your printer You trade off fanciness against speed if you opt for fewer flourishes you give your printer breathing room in memory And that rewards you with faster output Any of the following will slow down your laser printer text over 20 points lots of lines or patterns graphics macros justified text You may choose to add an optional RAM board to your Star LaserPrinter 4 if you need to download many fonts Alternatively consider either a software or hardware print spooler if printing holds up your computer more than you d li
24. a business envelope You don t even need to remove the paper tray to print the envelope just slide it into the manual feed slot The Star LaserPrinter 4 is ideal for desktop publishing The pages it produces make perfect photocopy or instant print masters And all the main desktop publishing systems including Aldus Corporation s PageMaker and Xerox Ventura Publisher work splendidly with the Star LaserPrinter 4 With page makeup programs like these you will be able maybe for the first time to deliver communications with the impact of top notch graphics 1 1 2 Font options You can print with an amazingly wide variety of type fonts and sizes The Star LaserPrinter 4 comes with two built in bit mapped fonts and two built in scalable fonts which can be printed from 3 points to 999 75 points in size a point is about 1 72 of an inch These fonts are CG Times Font Univers Font Courier Font Line Printer Font Besides these you may be able to use optional cartridges and disks to give your Star LaserPrinter variety of extra fonts such as these Prestige fonts Letter Gothic fonts H Gothic fonts Roman fonts Presentation fonts Optical Character Reader fonts Line drawing Bar codes You can load your Star LaserPrinter 41185 memory with fonts stored computer disks Literally hundreds of fonts are marketed by font supply companies Some fonts are even obtainable from computer user groups o
25. absolutely from the left edge of the page Or you can move relatively away from the current print position To show you want to move away from the current print position you put a plus 4 or minus sign before the number of units you want to move If you send a command that would put the print position outside either side margin the LaserPrinter will let you do just that However you can t send the print position further than its printable limits at the edges of the page 4 4 7 Horizontal moves by columns decipoints and dots To move the print position horizontally a number of columns send the command lt ESC gt amp an C in which for you enter the number of columns you wish to move the print position 53 So to move to column 45 you send the command lt ESC gt 45C But to move 45 columns to the right of the current print position you send 45 To move the print position horizontally a certain number of decipoints send the command lt ESC gt amp anH in which for you enter the number of decipoints you wish to move the print position preceded by a or sign if you want to move away from the current position You can move the print position horizontally by dots both ways too You can move a number of dots away from the left edge of the page or you can move number of dots away from the current print position To move horizontally this way send the command lt
26. and down loaded that you can use on your Star LaserPrinter We ll cover the particular sets of symbols you can choose for those fonts too Finally we ll find out how to load the printer with your selection of fonts 3 1 FONT TERMINOLOGY 3 1 1 Typefaces and fonts First a few definitions A typeface is a family of characters with the same basic design The artistic character design you choose establishes the tone of voice for all your documents Several variables can characterize typefaces including weight light me dium bold width condensed or extended and style upright or italic Courier for example is a typeface family that includes the characters in both Courier medium italic andCourier bold upright Let s consider these variables Bold print is sometimes called emphasized or double strike On earlier printers boldface is generated by printing each character twice dot matrix machines print the second impression just a hair below or to the right of the first one With the Star LaserPrinter 4III you can have different stroke weights in two ways Youcan havetwo different fonts storing and switching between a bold and a medium version of the font Or you can use just one font and set bold on and off with Escape sequences The latter way uses just half as much font memory 27 Narrow condensed faces used to be called compressed They cram about five characters in the space where three usually go
27. as lt SI gt and lt SO gt it s quicker than describing font attributes over and over again To give an ID number to an internal or cartridge font you first make it the primary font That is you send a left parenthesis Escape sequence a font attribute command as described below and the Shift In control code Then to assign an ID number to the font you send this command lt ESC gt c n D Forn you can enter any number between 0 and 32767 as the font s ID number Not that you can have more than 64 fonts in the printer at once even with the optional memory board A printer would need an elephantine memory to hold 32767 fonts 62 4 5 4 Selecting downloaded fonts The easiest way to select among downloaded fonts is to use font ID numbers When you download a font you make the Assign Font ID command above the first command in your sequence see How to download your own fonts later in this chapter After you ve assigned an ID number to a downloaded font you select itas your primary font with this Select Font ID command lt ESC gt n X in which is your desired font s ID number If you use many fonts you ll use that command to select among them But what if you prefer to just use SI or SO to shift between primary and secondary fonts You want to select a downloaded font ID as your secondary font This is the command to send lt ESC gt nX 4 5 5 Font attributes The third way to s
28. as text and will be printed 99 5 2 2 Defining picture frame size There are two escape sequences to define the area or picture frame that can be used for GL 2 graphics lt ESC gt cn X in which is the horizontal size of the picture frame in decipoints and lt ESC gt Y in which is the vertical size of the picture frame in decipoints These commands have the following side effects they set P1 to the lower left corner and P2 to the upper right corner of the picture frame set the soft clipping window to coincide with the picture frame clear the polygon buffer and move the cursor to If n in either of these commands is zero the picture frame is set to its default size 5 2 3 Picture frame anchor point This command sets the location of the Picture Frame anchor point the position of the upper left corner of the picture frame lt ESC gt c n T When is set to 0 the picture frame anchor point is set to the current point When it is other than 0 the anchor point is set to the upper left corner of the current logical page Side effects of this command are that it sets P1 to the lower left corner and P2 to the upper right corner of the picture frame it sets the soft clipping window to coincide with the picture frame it clears the polygon buffer and it moves the cursor to 100 5 2 4 Plot size There are two escape sequences to define the plot size of the drawing ESC c n in
29. communications between the printer and your computer You can set the INTERFACE parameters on the control panel 2 2 1 The INTERFACE parameter The INTERFACE parameter the most basic of the Star LaserPrinter 4 8 configuration settings defines how your computer connects to the printer You can set the INTERFACE to either Serial or Parallel In most single computer environments you ll opt for the faster Parallel interface in a multi user network you may be better off with Serial The particular printer interface settings don t matter as much as making sure they match those on your computer If you use an MS DOS computer you set your computer s parameters with the MODE command See your MS DOS manual 16 Most MS DOS AT compatible computers support up to three parallel and two serial ports which come on expansion boards you plug into your computer When you install such boards you must set switches to indicate the number and addresses of these ports If you specify the wrong addresses you won t be able to print Serial interface rate If you ask for the Serial interface you ll have to tell your printer more about how the data will be coming in in particular its rate and unit size and the meanings of any special bits The Rate parameter specifies how fast data will be arriving measured in baud named after the French communications engineer Jean Baudot Pick any of the following data transfer rates 300 bau
30. fonts If you really can t find the one you need you can design and download your own customized fonts This is no easy job but if you re curious it s described in chapter 4 32 3 3 SYMBOL SETS Let s summarize briefly to put the subject of symbol sets in context The attributes of a font determine what that font will look like when it is printed We covered all but orientation at the start of this chapter and orientation in the last chapter A font s attributes include orientation portrait or landscape symbol set which we ll look at next spacing monospaced or proportional pitch 10 or 16 66 characters per inch for example font height measured in points style upright or italics stroke weight light medium or bold typeface Line Printer Courier and so on Though they are not font attributes such printing features as subscripts superscripts and underlining are treated along with fonts in the following chapters Incidentally the best way to underline is to use the underline command instead of backspacing and overprinting with the separate underline charac ter _ If you do the latter with proportionally spaced text you ll usually find the underlining is too long for the text 3 3 1 What are symbol sets Keyboards differ from country to country The British need their symbol the French need their and the Spanish need their and fi etc Scientists need particular mathematical sig
31. function Self test Page 87 88 88 62 82 76 89 88 91 89 54 56 86 85 84 87 86 84 92 92 91 48 58 45 75 75 43 131 6 1 2 GL 2 commands Command ESC n A lt ESC gt B ESC c n ESC 1 lt ESC gt cn T ESC en X ESC c n Y AA AC AD AR AT CF CI CP DF DI DR DT DV EA EP ER ES EW FI FN FP FT IN IP IR IW LA LB LO Function Exit GL 2 mode Enter GL 2 mode Set horizontal plot size Set vertical plot size Set picture frame anchor point Set picture frame horizontal size in decipoints Set picture frame vertical size in decipoints Arc absolute Anchor corner Alternate font definition Arc relative Absolute arc three point Character fill mode Circle Character plot Default Absolute direction Relative direction Define label terminator Define variable text path Edge rectangle absolute Edge polygon Edge rectangle relative Extra space Edge wedge Select primary font Select secondary font Fill polygon Fill type Initialize Input P1 and P2 Input relative Input window Line attributes Label instruction Label origin Page 99 99 101 101 100 100 100 106 113 119 106 107 120 107 120 102 121 121 121 121 110 110 111 122 111 122 122 111 113 102 102 103 103 114 123 123 132 LT PA PD PE PM PR PU PW RA RF RO RR RT SA SB 5 SD SI SL SM SP SR SS SV TD
32. label sheets manually Both Avery s Lasergraphic labels and Canon s labels seem to work fine Your main concern is that the labels completely cover the backing sheet so it shows only at the outside margins That way individual labels can t easily peel off The safest approach is to laser print sharp master copies on paper and then photocopy those lists onto labels This will avoid putting your printer s adjustment for paper thickness out of adjustment Ifyou wantto print transparencies for your overhead projector some films will actually melt in your laser printer Stick to 3M s medium weight transparency film type 501 or to Hewlett Packard s 922851 2 3 3 The LAYOUT parameter The layout or format or setup of a page refers to how text is positioned on the page Layout includes page orientation margins and the spacing of charac ters across and lines down the page You cancontrol these with the LAYOUT parameter You pr bably won t use the LAYOUT parameter on the control panel s program menu very much though Most of the time you ll either leave the Star LaserPrinter 4III with its default settings or look after page formatting with commands you send from your computer Page orientation A page s orientation tells you in which direction the print goes on the page When you use portrait orientation the lines are printed as they are in anormal business letter across the width of the page A portrait painting of a person is us
33. main body of your text Horizontally you can specify the rule length or horizontal pattern size in dots with this command lt ESC gt cn in which for you enter how many dots across the page you want the rule or pattern to be Alternatively to specify the horizontal dimension for a rule or pattern in decipoints you can print this command lt ESC gt cn H in which is the horizontal rule or pattern size in decipoints Vertically you can indicate the size of your rule or pattern in dots with this command ESC c n B 88 in which is the number of dots defining the thickness of the rule or the depth of the pattern Alternatively to show the vertical dimension in decipoints you send this command ESC c n V in which is the number of decipoints in the rule s thickness or the pattern s vertical length 4 8 2 Choosing and printing a rule or pattern You need the next five commands to choose and print the particular pattern you want to fill your defined area These commands work together With the Print Pattern command which actually comes second you specify whether you want to fill your rectangular area with a solid black rule a finely dotted gray scale pattern ora predefined linear pattern And with the Specify Pattern command you can indicate which particular dotted or linear pattern you want You always send the Specify Pattern command before the Print Pattern command even if you want a
34. of the sets shown below Technically you can pair any symbol set with any internal cartridge or downloaded font however it doesn t make much sense to print text with a math or line drawing symbol set The Star LaserPrinter AIII provides two different symbol set commands You put a code into one command to select a particular symbol set for your pri mary or secondary font You use the other command to select the current or default symbol set for your primary or secondary font Selecting a symbol set This first symbol set command lets you select a particular symbol set for the current font To select a symbol set for your primary font send this command ESC n For n enter one of the following symbol codes The first character must be a digit and the second an uppercase letter 65 Note The symbol sets marked with can select when the approval Font Cartridge is installed CODE n OA 0E OF 0G 01 ON 00 00 05 00 0 IF 10 1Q 15 1U 2K 2Q 25 20 3Q 35 45 5 55 6 6M 6S 71 8M 8Q 8U 8Y 9Q 9U SYMBOL SET Math 7 symbols Line Draw characters ISO 60 Norwegian Roman Extension ISO 25 French HP German ISO 15 Italian ISO 14 HS ASCII ECMA 94 OCR A Math 8A symbols ISO 11 Swedish 150 6 US ASCII Bar Code 39 ISO 61 Norwegian ISO 4 UK ISO 69 French ISO 21 German OCR B Math 8B symbols HP Spanish Legal ISO 57 Chinese Pi font A sy
35. outline fonts the SD command must also be used to specify the point size This command executes an SB command to insure compatibility of the font selected with the font types allowed Select secondary font command FN font id This command does for the secondary font what FI does for the primary font 122 Label instruction command LB text text label terminator This command prints draws printable characters in the string up to 1024 characters using the primary font selected and executes the functions of control characters in the string Control characters 51 and SO switch between the primary and secondary fonts Label origin command LO position This command positions labels relative to the current pen location In order to use this command for centering right justification etc it is necessary to store the label temporarily The Star LaserPrinter 4 has buffer capable of storing the longest possible label see LB above Select alternate font command SA This command selects the font currently designated as alternate This command has the same effect as a shift out SO in the string of an LB command except that the shift remains until the SS command is received Select font type command SB This command specifies which types of fonts will be used for labeling commands When the value of n is 0 the scalable fonts are selected and selects the bitmap fonts Commands FI and FN impl
36. set the top margin though it does not change even when you change the definition of a line You can use this command to set the top margin anytime Just be aware that if the current print position is below your margin you ll have to move the print position back up Naturally you have to keep your top margin inside the page length limit Use this command to set the top margin setting to be the number of lines down from the top of the page that you want left blank before you start printing 48 ESC amp n E Note that the character following amp is a lowercase L 4 3 4 Text length and the bottom margin By default the LaserPrinter automatically gives you top and bottom margins of the same size So you only need to send the Text Length command when you want different top and bottom margins If you want a different bottom margin first decide how many text lines will produce the margin you want Check that they won t produce a bottom margin lower than the page length Then send the following Text Length command entering for n your desired number of lines ESC amp nF The Page Length Top Margin and Text Length commands therefore work together to set the bottom margin bottom margin page length top margin text length The bottom margin is called the perforation region with printers that use continuous forms You normally want to skip the perforations between the continuous pages but
37. sometimes you don t for example when you print labels 7 Though you likely won t often want to do it the Star LaserPrinter will let youcompletely ignore the bottom margin too If you choose to print below the bottom margin remember that you might lose words or graphics in the unprintable region at the edge of the page The command looks like this lt ESC gt L If you want to allow printing below the bottom margin for enter 0 zero But if you want to forbid printing below the margin which 15 the default enter one 49 4 3 5 Example Page formatting OK let s have a go at formatting a page The picture of the page we want is just below The actual width of the text on the page depends on which font we use Let s plan on using our 16 66 pitch Line Printer font at eight lines per inch column 10 column 70 top margin 8 lines text length page length 112 lines 100 lines bottom margin 4 4 lines occasional footnotes As it prints we also want to permit the occasional one line footnote below the normal bottom margin And when we re finished printing let s reset the side margins so we can switch to our usual font width Here are the commands that will produce this format for us ESC amp 112P ESC 10770 lt ESC gt amp 8e 1001 OL We ll send our page here ESC 9 50 4 4 MOVING THE PRINT POSITION 4 4 1 Many ways to move The LaserPrinter
38. specify other sizes too A different sizes tray automatically selects that different paper size 8 5 by 11 inch letter size paper 8 5 by 14 inch legal size paper B5 international used in every country except North America 182 by 257 mm the narrower executive size 7 25 by 10 5 inches 20 One other nice thing you can dois print directly on envelopes With this Paper Size parameter you can specify envelopes in sizes Monarch COM 10 International C5 and DL Then just work out where to put the address set the orientation to landscape see below and slide your envelope into the multi purpose tray 2 3 2 Hints Paper labels and transparencies The best paper for the Star LaserPrinter 4 has a smooth finish and is of 60 to 105 g m 20 to 24 pound weight Any paper designed for photo copiers should do the trick though Xerox 4024 and Canon NP printnicely High quality cotton bond paper which contains up to 25 percent cotton fibres works passably well with even heavier weights The absolute limits are 16 pound paper at the light end and 35 pound stock at the heaviest With heavy paper open the tray so the pages will be delivered face up and won t have to bend over the final rollers Be aware that any puckered or woven finish may not print as sharply as you d like Avoid shiny coated paper or multipart forms And don t even think about putting in stapled or ripped pages If you frequently change pape
39. t print what s the computer screen recheck your connections and interface settings With an applications program like Lotus 2 3 or Microsoft Word you use a printer setup routine to match your computer with your printer s operating characteristics So double check your software settings your computer s output for example might not be going to the proper port 2 2 3 Hints The hex dump To make your Star LaserPrinter print in hexadecimal rather than the usual ASCII symbols press the control panel buttons that put the printer offline and in PROGRAM mode Move to the EMULATION parameter s HEX DUMP setting and select it Some control or Escape codes can be problems on a few computers those computers change certain codes when sending them to the printer If you think you have this problem you need to see exactly what your printer is receiving We recommend you run a short program that loops through and prints the ASCII table Print in hexadecimal rather than the usual ASCII symbols If you spot a problem code you can try to bypass the problem either by sending each code directly to the printer or by changing your system s printer driver Such computer specific solutions though are beyond the scope of this manual We suggest that if necessary you consult another programmer more familiar with your computer Actually if you are debugging any program you may find this hex dump mode helpful It can be a great trouble shoo
40. the same as the left margin for text But if you enter 1 the margin for graphics will be set at the column of the current print position and your image will appear only to the right of that graphics margin 4 Issue the command to set the compression technique if any of the graphical data Three graphic data compression formats are available for data transfer The data compression format to be used is selected using the following com mand lt ESC gt b n M where n can take the value 0 1 or 2 Any other value is interpreted as full discussion of data compression technique is outside the scope of this manual but a brief explanation of this command should be useful e Where n 0 no encoding takes place and a simple binary transfer takes place Bit 7 of the first byte corresponds to the first dot in a raster row bit to the second and so on Where n 1 run length encoding takes place This is a compression technique where the data is divided into pairs the first byte of each pair serving as the repetition count for the data in the second pair If the first byte of the pair is equal to zero the data in the second byte is not repeated Where 2 the data to follow is in Tagged Image File Format TIFF conforming to rev 4 0 standards The demands of space do not allow a detailed discussion of TIFF standards here but briefly TIFF files com bine features of non encoded and non encoded files Many prop
41. these three steps when you use rule and pattern graphics 1 Define the dimensions you need 2 Choose the graphics pattern you want to fill in those dimensions 3 Print the pattern Remember to send the following rule or pattern commands in that order 87 4 8 1 Defining rule or pattern dimensions Defining the dimensions of the area you want to fill just means indicating the horizontal and vertical size of the pattern or the rule s length and thickness You can indicate dimensions in either dots or decipoints tenths of a point At 300 dots or 720 decipoints to the inch decipoint measurements are more accurate The printer converts decipoint values into dots using 2 4 decipoints to the dot It rounds up fractions to the next integer So 1225 decipoints would work out to 510 4 dots and the printer rounds this up to 511 dots Your dimension commands specify an area to the right and down from the current print position If you define an area larger than the page your printer will accept the command It will however cut off your pattern or rule at the boundaries of the page s printable area When the printer finishes its print map of your rule or pattern the print position automatically returns to the spot from which you started That means for instance that you can make a lightly shaded rectangle and then start printing text right over it This kind of box can be useful for setting off particular information from the
42. time you choose a font This applies to other commands too not just 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 lt ESC gt and command category prefix just once and capitalize only the last command character 42 For example to define the style weight and character face for the primary font you might send these command ESC s 1S ESC s 7B ESC s 3T which would produce italics boldface Courier But this single command does the same thing all with one blow ESC s Is 7b 3T 4 2 CONTROLLING THE PRINTER 4 2 1 Self test You can check how your LaserPrinter is printing and have a look at its parameter settings by sending this Self Test command lt ESC gt z Notice that the z is lowercase this is the only PCL command that ends with a small letter After you send a Self Test command the printer finishes printing any pages left in its memory Then on a new page it prints its current parameters just important items such as number of copies and fonts in use The printer finishes off the page with a continuous display of all the characters in its default font The printer also quickly checks its interface Assuming it finds no trouble the printer is then ready for your next page If the printer detects a problem it shows a control panel me
43. to the absolute value of the code but the pattern is adaptive and its length is adjusted up or down to fit one or more complete patterns After a solid line has been selected by specifying LT without parameters pattern code 99 restores the previous line pattern and any residual pattern LT99 is ignored when non solid line pattern is selected While plotting with a solid line pattern the following commands clear the previous line type and any residual pattern AC IN IP IR IW LA LT PW RF RO SC SP UL and WU The pattern length is measured as a percentage of the distance between P1 and P2 if mode 0 or in millimeters of mode 1 If not specified the current values of pattern length and mode are used 115 width command PW width This command specifies a new width for the logical pen The default pen width is 0 35 mm or 1 of the distance to P2 A width of 0 sets the thinnest line possible one dot Metric widths are scaled by the ratio size of picture frame size If the pen number is not specified the new width is applied to both If neither pen 0 or 1 1s specified the command is ignored This command does not atfect the character stroke width with the exception of stick characters with stroke weight 9999 Raster fill definition command RF index width height pen pen pen This command defines a rectangular pattern that may be used as area fill and f
44. 10 126 mM 109 125 FP dae 156 Symbol Name ID Number Roman 8 8U BMESENEBENESESESES e a a N a Lond a A rs 5 a xi rz c rs 12 20 ng 116 Em al 113 EUNDUM 115 1 c Pra rel rs 114 r3 7 12 28 44 EXE EX Ios 5 157 Symbol Name ID Number Roman 8 cont i 135 151 167 199 215 231 247 238 239 174 175 u 142 143 138 154 186 202 218 234 250 wn N e N m N N wo gt M lt lt a n e a N m 158 Symbol Name ID Number IBM PC US 10U EX 97 mm 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 114 Em ra pg 0 at 111 127 6 86 9 Du EIS c rs pa rs rz pa raj rz rs a 49 65 48 5
45. 157 205 221 237 253 190 d F 143 159 175 191 207 223 239 255 162 Symbol Name ID Number 850 120 cd rm rj px m 2 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 E c pat 115 114 55 26 __ 42 58 90 Em 28 __ 44 60 2 3 ps 163 Symbol Name ID Number PC 850 12U 0 251 253 254 255 224 225 226 227 228 230 231 237 238 239 217 214 215 192 208 209 194 210 195 211 196 212 201 203 207 205 185 187 189 191 169 171 173 174 233 138 154 170 186 25 235 153 155 157 158 219 140 156 172 xi m 236 252 221 222 137 139 141 142 143 159 175 164 EX 136 168 184 200 216 232 7 135 151 167 183 199 ES 134 150 166 182 198 2 133 149 165 181 197 213 229 245 Index LA arc commands 106 107 ascender 28 ASCH 6 11 ASCII symbol set 33 attributes See font attributes auto parameters 24 auto wrap 24 Autowrap command 59 B backspace command 57 baseline 29 baud rate 17 binary arithmetic 5 6 bit mapped fonts 2 30 bold print 27 2 carriage return 57 cartridge fonts 31 32 36 character c
46. 2 How to download your own fonts Characters that you define and store yourself are called user defined characters Let s assume you already know what text is to be in your custom font and have designed its typeface weight width and style Once you ve created your own characters you ll need to download them to your laser printer 79 The process of downloading a font you ve designed yourself is somewhat detailed To download your font you follow the following steps 1 assign a font ID number to your font 2 download a font header 3 identify the position of each character to be downloaded 4 send a character descriptor and bit map for each character 5 specify whether the file is to be permanent or temporary 1 Assigning a font ID to your font assign an ID to your font you send this command described above under Assigning font ID numbers with an ID number for n between 0 and 32767 ESC c n D Before sending that command though check whether the ID number is already allocated to another font If it is that existing font will be deleted with the next command 2 Downloading a header for your font Even if the printer doesn t have enough memory to create your font it will delete any existing font with the same ID number when you download the header for your font A font s header is the list of its attributes which your printer uses to select that font Each font header 26 bytes long is store
47. 4 provides excellent control over the print position where you poise your laser Horizontally you can send backspace and carriage return commands Vertically you can move the print position down page by printing so many lines per inch or by sending line feed and half line feed commands You can move horizontally or vertically to tab settings as well Those aren t all You can also tell the Star LaserPrinter to move its print position either vertically or horizontally in increments of 1 10 1 12 or 3 50 inch pitch settings 1 48 or 1 120 inch line or column definitions 1 300 inch dots 1 720 inch tenths of a point All these commands are described below One hint about moving the print position you can confuse yourself trying to use more than two different units during the same session So decide beforehand how precise you need to be in moving the print position not forgetting any graphics you want to include Then stick to the unit s you choose 4 4 2 Lines per inch This vertical line spacing command gives you more options than just the six or eight lines per inch of early printers Use this command to set how many lines you want in each vertical inch of your page lt ESC gt amp n D For you enter the number of lines per inch you want any of 1 2 3 4 6 8 12 16 24 or 48 If you enter a number other than these the printer will ignore the command 51 4 4 3 Defining th
48. 6 2 3 Controlling the 22 20 2 4 Controlling the 22 2 25 2 5 The Star LaserPrinter Superset 26 3 Fonts eere ia tet ea 27 3 1 Font Terminology eese e ee 27 3 2 How the Star LaserPrinter 411 Stores Fonts 30 3 3 Symbol Sets etre ette etn ped 3 4 Managing 1 2 8 34 4 Printer Control Language 0 2 41 4 1 Printer Control Language 2 41 4 2 Controlling the Printer 43 4 3 Page Orientation 46 4 4 Moving the Print Position 51 4 5 Controlling Fonts contener mtem rne ts 61 4 6 Using Your Own Fonts eee 79 4 7 Raster 84 4 8 Pattern Graphics cesserit deri Lern 87 4 9 e em sepe e da i 93 5 Vector Graphics eee eee 97 5 1 GL 2 Commands and Syntax 97 5 2 Controlling the 22 99 5 3 Configuration and Status 02 102 5 4 Vector 106 5 5 Polygon Group Ie een 110 5 6 Line and Fill Attribute 22 2 113 53 Character Group cate ect e tren gat e tete trees 119 5 8 Escape Sequences in GL 2 Mode 126 6 Technical Suppleme
49. 9 erg 159 Symbol Name ID Number IBM PC US 144 145 146 10U N 230 231 232 234 235 236 237 238 239 218 219 220 221 222 223 214 215 216 198 199 200 207 202 203 204 205 2 g al Jel 5 2 8 18 el 8 e e c ic oi wl 150 151 152 5 5 5 157 158 134 135 136 3 3 4 141 142 166 167 168 137 185 201 217 233 249 170 171 172 173 174 143 159 175 191 5 EX 133 149 165 181 197 213 229 24 A EA 131 147 163 179 195 211 227 243 132 148 164 18 160 Symbol Name ID Number Denmark Norway U EEEZESENESESERESES n c 112 1 Jerd ra rs rs ra 11 4 2 e ra pa ro 3 100 101 0 C c rx rs 103 7 al e cs 104 105 8 10 90 106 108 109 rir re rs 110 F 161 Symbol Name ID Number cont 174 206 222 238 IBM PC Denmark Norway 158 e e lt m m n m m m ES 132 148 m 196 1212 244 141
50. Circle command CI radius chord angle This command draws a circle radius with its center at the current location Plot absolute command x2 v2 xn yn This command establishes absolute plotting and moves the pen to the specified absolute coordinates from the current pen position There is no limit to the number of arguments that can be specified If this command is given with no arguments it establishes that the coordinates in subsequent commands are absolute If there are an odd number of arguments the last argument is disregarded Pen down command PD x yl x2 y2 yn This command is the same as PA except that a down flag is set When there are no arguments that is the only effect of the command 107 Polyline encoded command PE flag value or coordinate pair flag value or coordinate pair With this command there should be no separators between parameters and the command terminator lt gt must be used The meanings of and relation between parameters are as given in the following table Flag hex ASCII Meaning Next parameter Select pen number encoded as base 64 32 3CorBC lt Pen up coordinates of point to move to encoded as base 64 or 32 3EorBE gt Fraction number of fraction bits contained in coordinate encoded as base 64 or 32 3DorBD Start PA coordinates 37 7 7 Start base 32 encoding Pen number specifie
51. D 09 which means the same thing 1 2 2 The ASCII table Where does the Star LaserPrinter get the characters and instructions it needs to print inthe first place It gets them from your computer which sends a stream of text and commands to your printer The program in your computer that controls everything sent to the printer called the printer driver will usually be included with your computer programs such as your word processor But the commands could also come from a program you ve written perhaps in BASIC a programming language that uses common English words Internally computers and printers use only the binary number system to represent both commands andall the alphabetic numeric and other keyboard symbols Nearly all of those machines use the same scheme to code those symbols the American Standards Code for Information Interchange ASCII example in our familiar decimal system binary 01001010 adds up to the number 74 Depending on which program your printer is using it can interpret that binary string 01001010 as either the number 74 or the symbol J The printer stores the symbol J at position 74 in a table in its memory That eight bit binary string or byte can be broken into two halves The left or high order part containing 0100 is called the zone portion the right part holding the 1010 is called the digits portion And in the hexadecimal number system the zone and digit parts of that byte are represented
52. ESC gt current pattern fill as selected with lt ESC gt T 92 N If 5 has been selected you will need the following command lt ESC gt v n T This command selects the current pattern type to be applied to source images not rectangular areas before printing n Value Pattern 0 zero Solid black 1 Solid white 2 Currently defined shading pattern 4 Currently defined cross hatched pattern Forn 2 or 3 the pattern defined by the most recent lt ESC gt c n G command is used To change the pattern a new lt ESC gt c G and a new lt ESC gt v n T command are needed 91 The following two commands control transparency whether or not white sections of an image block out black pixels that are already in place ESC This selects the source transparency mode whether white areas of the source image should be treated as transparent and do not white out black pixels they cover or opaque in which case they white out black pixels Set n to 0 for the transparent mode and to for the opaque mode ESC v n This selects the pattern transparency mode similarly to the above command whether the current pattern should be treated as transparent or opaque Set ri to 0 for the transparent mode and to for the opaque mode 4 8 3 Examples Pattern graphics To specify a block five inches wide you could use a horizontal dimension of 1500 dots 5 inches times 300 dot
53. ESC gt pn X in which for n you put either the number of dots away from the page edge or preceded by a or sign the relative number of dots away from the current position So to move 20 dots from the left edge you send this command ESC p 20X And to move 20 dots to the left of the current position you send ESC p 20 54 You can also move the cursor 8 columns at a time horizontally by use of the horizontal tab command Simply send a tab character lt HT gt to do this Reverse tabbing is not possible 4 4 8 Moving the print position vertically You can use similar units to move the print position vertically lines dots or decipoints Both lines and decipoints can be fractions to two decimal places You can also move the print position absolutely down from the top edge of the page or relatively away from the current print position Again to show you want to move away from the current print position you put a plus 4 or minus sign before the number of units you want to move The important difference about moving vertically up or down is what the printer does when the print position hits the page top or bottom If you try to move above the top margin the print position stays right at the margin And if you move the print position down off the page the page is ejected and printing continues on the next page 4 4 9 Vertical moves by lines decipoints and dots To move the print position vertical
54. Half Line Feed command is the one you want for subscripts This command moves the print position down the page one half the current line depth lt ESC gt To senda reverse Half Line Feed moving the print position up to let you print a superscript use this command lt ESC gt amp a 5 R 4 4 14 Form feed This command like the PRINT button makes the printer advance to anew sheet of paper When you send the lt FF gt control code you are also telling the printer to print all its stored page information Remember to send this command to make sure any last partial page in your printer s memory gets printed lt FF gt 4 4 15 Define automatic line endings When you press the Carriage Return key what do you expect to happen Most people think a computer keyboard should work like a typewriter with a Carriage Return starting a new line as well But computer programs don t have to stick to that analogy Some programs particularly graphics packages want a Carriage Return to just move the print position back to the left edge of the page And they want a Line Feed to move down to a new line without going back to the beginning of the line So you can specify exactly how you want lt CR gt lt LF gt and lt FF gt to work with this command lt ESC gt amp k n G 58 For n enter one of the numbers from this table n AUTOMATIC COMMAND 0 zero CR LF and FF work according to their basic definitions
55. R for carriage returns and single character Escape sequences such as lt ESC gt E for resetting the printer But all the other commands you can send your Star LaserPrinter 4 look like this lt ESC gt cc n in which the cc prefix is a symbol or two showing the general category of commands to which this one belongs is some variable you want to use in this command and C is the specific command you want performed 41 Two important details make PCL commands First all Escape sequences end 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 lt ESC gt code is an actual ASCII symbol For example the PCL command that sets the right margin to column 65 is ESC amp a 65 M which you would code in BASIC as 10 LPRINT 27 amp 65 That command sends your printer the symbols 6 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 by just specifying what font attributes you want such as bold or proportional spacing If you select a font by specifying every one of its attributes you can be certain that you re selecting successfully But it could mean fair bit of repetitive typing each
56. Star LaserPrinter Operations Manual 1 1 4 The Star LaserPrinter 4 is a computer The Star LaserPrinter first maps the characters to be printed into its own random access memory That is the printer builds a picture in its memory corresponding to the page you want to print When that s done the printer can reproduce the page onto paper on its own letting your computer get on with other work Your Star LaserPrinter comes with one megabyte of RAM the equivalent of about one million characters A Star LaserPrinter option lets you add a second megabyte of RAM if say you need to map full page graphics or store more fonts Accompanying all that RAM is another 2 megabytes of read only memory ROM containing a library of internal fonts and the programs that let the Star LaserPrinter emulate other printers An Intel 80960 computer chip controls both the memory and the printing mechanism in the printer called the print engine The printer stores a whole page in RAM before printing it If a page is so dense that it overflows memory most unlikely event the Star LaserPrinter 4 prints the page on two sheets 1 1 5 The Print engine It sthe print engine that forms the actual characters and graphics The engine directs its laser a pinpoint stream of light pulses through mirrors and lenses onto the surface of a positively charged rotating drum Mirror Lens Laser beam
57. TR UL WG WU Function Line type Plot absolute Pen down Polyline encoded Polygon mode Plot relative Pen up Pen width Fill rectangle absolute Raster fill definition Rotate coordinate system Fill rectangle relative Relative arc three points Select alternate font Select font type Scale Standard font definition Absolute character size Character slant Symbol mode Select pen Relative character size Select standard font Screened vector Transparent data Transparency mode User defined line type Fill wedge Pen width unit Page 115 107 107 108 112 108 109 116 112 116 104 112 109 123 123 104 124 124 125 116 117 125 125 117 125 118 118 112 118 133 6 2 SYMBOL SETS This section gives tables of the symbol sets for the Star LaserPrinter The decimal character code of each character is shown in an inset to the lower right of the character The hexadecimal code can be found by reading the entries at the top and left edges of the table For example the character A is in column 4 and row 1 so its hexadecimal character code is 41 This is equivalent 4 x 16 1 65 to decimal 65 the number in the inset Control codes recognized by this printer are indicated by abbreviations inside pointed brackets lt gt lt Sample gt ID Nuniber Symbol Name Hexadecimal value high order OD ISO 60 Character Decimal value Control code Hexadecimal value
58. an ISO 21 1G po c rx 48 64 11 m 49 __ 65 113 2 2 66 98 __ 114 EXE Tp 100 _ 116 EX 5 69 85 117 4 val ra 86 102 7 EN 103 119 104 _ 120 cal s 121 aaj 60 108 124 rx rra ral rz rs n ps 110 rg rs F SES 148 Symbol Name ID Number HP Spanish 18 Ed el ra rms 11 2 rx ral om 100 2 B 69 101 102 6 ri 103 55 104 105 EI 108 LS n rara 110 r pb PR p 149 Symbol Name ID Number Chinese ISO 57 2K 49 1 66 98 s9 ft 100 5 69 i 1 13 1 15 16 17 18 6 102 XS 7 H rs nai 19 20 21 22 23 24 1054 ES 90 106 1 107 1 111 127 103 ra 44 60 108 150 Symbol Name ID Number Spanish ISO 17 25 MRSS o Ed px 112 1
59. as 4 and A respectively look them up in the list above So the laser printer understands the symbol J as 01001010 which we also represent as the decimal number 74 or the hexadecimal number 4A We ve printed this byte vertically and horizontally below showing how it adds up to decimal 74 and hex 4A 0x27 0 x 26 64 0x2 0 0 x 24 0 1x2 8 0x2 0 1 2 2 0x2 0 74 Decimal zone digits 0100 1010 Binary 4 A Hexadecimal The ASCII table in the Technical Supplement shows all these equivalent representations for the symbols your laser printer understands The table organizes them in ascending order In fact ASCII is organized in a way that actually makes sense Flip back there for a quick look right now See how you can slice the table into clumps of 16 or 32 based on what s in the zone portion under the hexadecimal column These clumps make subgroups of similar symbols e hex 00 to 1F are the command symbols called control codes e hex 20 to 40 are the common keyboard symbols and numerals hex 41 to 60 are capital letters and the less common keyboard symbols hex 61 to 7F are lowercase letters and a few final symbols That takes care of the first 128 ASCII symbols However nearly every computer and printer manufacturer treats the second half of the table differently Hewlett Packard for example puts a variety of accented foreign language characters into positions 128 255 often referred to a
60. command does two things it tells the printer to accept paper you will feed in yourself and to print each page two times This is handy when you want two copies of a letter on preprinted letterhead 45 You can now send your letter from your word processing program to the printer and feed in those pages When you re done you may want to send the lt ESC gt E command one more time 4 3 PAGE ORIENTATION You might reasonably think of page orientation as a page formatting issue To print words widthwise on a page however each letter in effect has to lie on its back So orientation is actually a font attribute and is treated as such later on in this chapter 4 3 1 Page Length The multi purpose tray sets the default page size for your laser printer When you want a different size you ll need to reset that page size You should always change the page length before you send text for printing The Page Length command sets the number of lines that can print on a page lines per inch times the number of inches The Page Length command format is lt ESC gt amp n where is the number of text lines on the page it be any number between 5 and 128 The default number of lines is the length of the paper tray times 6 lines per inch For 11 inch letter size paper that works out to 66 lines that s also the default when you haven t put in a tray If you don t want the default length you should send the Page Length co
61. compression technique if any of the graphical data 5 Send the commands which transfer the graphics data 6 Send the command to end graphics 1 Define the resolution Before graphics are sent to the printer the resolution must be set This is achieved using the following command lt ESC gt tn R If the value of n is greater than 150 the resolution of the final graphics image will be 300 dots per inch dpi if 7 15 from 101 to 150 the resolution will be 150 dpi if n 15 from 76 to 100 the resolution will be 100 dpi and if is 75 or less the resolution will be 75 dpi The default resolution is 75 dots per inch After graphics have started the printer will ignore any resolution command until it receives the command to end graphics 2 Set the orientation of the graphic image To set the orientation of the graphic image transmit the following command ESC r n where can take a value of either or 3 When the value of is 0 raster graphics printing will take place in the logical page orientation and when the value of n is 3 raster graphics will be printed along the width of the physical page regardless of the logical page orientation 84 3 Issue the command to start graphics The command to start graphics must be transmitted next The command is ESC rn A where can take a value of either 0 or 1 If you enter 0 the margin for graphics will be set at the left most printable edge of the page not
62. d 600 baud 1200 baud 2400 baud 4800 baud 9600 baud the default 19200 baud 38400 baud Roughly one character a second works out to 1 1 baud If you re not sure how fast your computer will transmit the general rule is to experiment Try sending a page to print at the highest speed and work your way down until the printer s output looks OK Serial interface special bits In Serial mode you ll also have to specify if your computer sends data bits in groups of seven most computers send eight the default for a byte Sometimes an extra bit gets appended to make the sum of all bits in each character always odd or even that s called parity A parity bit can help spot transmission errors If your computer sends that extra parity bit you ll have to say whether it produces even or odd number of bits in character 17 You ll also have to indicate if your computer sends two stop bits to indicate the end of a byte instead of one the default These serial interface settings are described in more detail in your Star LaserPrinter 41 Operations Manual Serial interface protocol Finally in Serial mode your computer will use one of two protocols to ensure data is sent properly Protocol sometimes also called handshaking means who says what when and is the way your printer tells your computer it s ready to receive data Your computer and printer communicate by sending protocol control codes they re at th
63. d at the front of the font You send a font header command to your printer just before you download the font s characters The header command looks like this ESC s n W and must be followed immediately by the data describing the font s at tributes The value is the actual number of bytes of description data almost always 26 Note unlike other commands you must enter the ASCII symbols 2 and 6 here not the number 26 80 Here s a typical font header command lt ESC gt s26W 0 lt SUB gt 01000 lt RS gt 0 lt RS gt 02001 lt FF gt 0d0a0000 lt ETX gt Aside from the actual command at the front the rest looks like gobbledy gook But there s 26 bytes there each one an ASCII character each one specifying a particular font attribute The enclosed items with brackets are single ASCII characters that happen to be control codes Each byte in the header is a number which you send as whatever symbol happens to be stored at that numeric position in the ASCII table Coding some of these numbers is tricky however and we recommend you ask your Star Micronics dealer to help you build your font header To get you started the table below shows what each of those bytes means BYTE MEANING 0 1 header length 2 blank 3 font size 4 5 blank 6 7 baseline position for characters 8 blank 9 cell width 10 blank 11 cell height 12 orientation 13 spacing 14 15 symbol set 16 17 pitch 18 19 line spacing 20 22 blank 23 style
64. don t send a command is no wrapping 59 Note Even when Autowrap is on the printer will print beyond the right margin if you have sent one of the direct positioning commands described above which move the print position past the margin Also note that Autowrap doesn t move the whole word down to the next line that s a job for a word processor not your laser printer 4 4 17 Pushing and popping the print position This provides a wonderful way to keep track of the print position It works by letting you keep a list of up to 20 print positions You can push the current print position onto the top of the list whenever you want Later you can off whatever position is at the top of the list making it the current print position When would you want to save and restore print positions this way When ever you need to interrupt what you re printing now to stick something special onto the page This is most handy when you need to jump from text to graphics and back Say you ve written one routine that puts the page number in the same place onevery page and another that under certain circumstances prints two heavy lines You print merrily along until you have to print the lines You then push the current print position to execute the line printing routine But part way through that you hit the page number spot So you push the print position again and run the page number routine Then you can pop the print posi
65. downloadable fonts offer many more choices Downloadable fonts usually cost less too The printer always knows where its internal fonts are For each emulation program it also keeps track of cartridge and downloaded fonts in a part of its memory called the font table So with the Star LaserPrinter 4 you can have many fonts available at any one time the internal fonts the fonts on any cassettes you ve plugged in and any fonts you have downloaded You can change fonts in mid line to emphasize a word or two whenever you want You can mix internal cartridge and downloaded fonts in the same document 2 4 Hints Where to get fonts You can print any downloadable font that works on the HP LaserJet III Several other companies sell downloadable fonts which are compatible with your Star LaserPrinter 4 The Bitstream Corporation in Boston is one of the more popular Conographic is another Xerox includes a set of fonts with its Ventura Publisher desktop publishing software which you can use with your printer The SoftCraft company now markets a Bitstream developed product called Fontware With Fontware you can generate bit mapped fonts of any size from a library of outline fonts In outline fonts each 8 profile is defined just once and the printer generates any font height from that profile which saves printer memory Don t hesitate to ask your Star dealer where you can buy cartridge and downloadable
66. duced parameter range may produce unexpected results Real A number where the integer portion is from 1 073 741 824 to 1 073 741 823 You are assured of at least 6 significant digits including integer and fractional portion You may omit the decimal point when no decimal fraction is specified If you do not specify a sign the parameter is assumed to be positive Using a number outside this range causes the command to be ignored Clamped real A number where the integer portion is from 32 768 to 32 767 you assured of at least 6 significant digits including integer and fractional portion You may omit the decimal point when no decimal fraction is specified If you do not specify a sign the parameter is assumed to be positive Sending a number outside this range does not cause an error but the number is clamped to the limits of the range Certain commands have parameters which are restricted to a smaller range These ranges are listed in the parameter tables for each command Sending number outside the reduced parameter range causes the command to be ignored Label Any sequence of characters In the GL 2 language text is described using the term label Refer to the Label LB command for a complete description 98 5 1 2 Coordinate system In GL 2 the coordinate system can be set by the user The default coordinate system has its origin at the lower left of the picture frame P1 with its x axis hori
67. e against its neighbours so they appear evenly spaced But adjacent round characters are apt to look too far apart while flat sided characters may appear too close Proportional spacing takes into account the differences in widths among letters compare with WW Proportionally spaced printing is easier to read than typewriter style printing in which all characters including punctuation have the same width Real typesetters equip certain characters with kerns letter parts that extend out to overlap adjoining letters In this word the y is kerned closely against the T Kerning separates great type from good type 29 3 2 HOW THE STAR LASERPRINTER 41 STORES FONTS 3 2 1 Bit mapped fonts Star Micronics has earned a reputation for attractive well designed fonts on its printers and this laser printer continues the tradition The Star LaserPrinter 4 uses bit mapped fonts Each character is made up of a pattern or map of dots just like characters on a dot matrix printer or on your computer screen Resolution makes the difference to make each character the Star LaserPrinter 4III uses ten or twenty times as many dots as a dot matrix printer or computer screen does Every size of print you want plus every italic or boldface version has its own bit map and is normally considered a separate font It takes a good deal of printer memory to hold all the fonts you might want at any given moment Star LaserPrinter fon
68. e front of the ASCII table Some programmers call the and XOFF control codes kiss on and kiss off others call the same protocol and for device control Either way these codes let your printer run the show telling the computer when to start and stop sending data Your printer asks to have data held back when its memory is nearly full or when it senses an ERROR condition DTR Data Terminal Ready protocol does the same thing slightly differ ently The printer sends a continuous high voltage signal over the cable as long as it can accept data but drops the voltage to say whoa to the computer Look in your computer s operations manual in the section dealing with communications protocols to see which is best for your system You can stick to the printer s defaults if your computer does not use the DTR but does use XON XOFF 2 2 2 Checking your connections Your computer and printer may have trouble communicating when you first introduce them to each other The quick way to find out if your settings and printer cable are working is to send your printer a printout from your screen CTRL P with MS DOS When that s done you will also have to press the print button on the printer which makes the printer advance to a new sheet No laser printer prints and ejects a page until it s told to feed a form or until it has received all the lines the page can hold 18 If your Star LaserPrinter doesn
69. e given in the following table kind value 1 line end butt default 2 square 3 triangular 4 round 2 line join 1 mitered default 2 mitered beveled 3 triangular 4 round 5 beveled 6 none 3 miter limit to 32 767 default 5 For a line end other than a butt end add 1 2 line width to the length If the miter in a mitered line join exceeds the miter limit it is truncated If the miter in a mitered beveled line join exceeds the miter limit a beveled join is used The miter limit is the ratio miter length line width Miter limits smaller than 1 are rounded up to 1 For thin lines line width lt 0 35 mm the line end is always round and line joins 15 also round 114 Line type command LT pattern length mode This command specifies the line pattern to be used when drawing lines When no parameters are specified this command selects a solid line and saves the previous line type pattern length and any unused portion of the pattern If there are parameters a pattern 15 selected as follows Patterns are described by the length of dashes and gaps as a percentage of the pattern length starting witha dash 0 represents a dot Patterns and their codes are code pattern 0 0 not a line only one point 0 100 50 50 70 30 80 100 10 70 10 10 10 50 10 10 10 10 10 70 100 100 10 50 100 10 10 10010 If the pattern code is negative from 8 to 1 the pattern corresponds
70. e space and column Before you use print positioning commands you first may want to change the definitions of the line or space sometimes called vertical and horizontal motion indexes VMI and HMI These definitions don t actually move the print position Instead they define two basic units you can use in print position commands What s important about the space is that it defines how far the print position travels for every character you print except for proportionally spaced text The space can also be thought of as the width of a vertical print column One column width is the width of the space character in the current font no matter whether it is monospaced or proportionally spaced Occasionally you may want to change space width to override the current pitch setting Let s look at an example The space width comes in units of 1 120th of an inch and the Courier font can print 10 characters per inch Each character covers a tenth 12 120ths of an inch so that font s default space width is 12 units If we change its space width to 6 each character would half overlap the one before it If you are using lt SI gt and lt SO gt to shift between a primary and secondary font it s a good idea to change the space width after every shift To change the space width you send this command lt ESC gt amp k nH in which for n you can enter a number from 0 zero to 840 A width of 0 will print characters on top of each
71. e that the opposite meanings of the parameter values Also there is no command corresponding to the standard lt ESC gt v n User defined line type command UL index gap gap20 This command creates line types by specifying gap patterns which define the length of spaces and lines comprising a line type The index parameter is a clamped integer which can be range through 8 If the index is negative its absolute value is used A maximum of 20 gaps are allowed for each user defined line type Gap values must be non negative a gap value of zero produces a dot if specified for an odd numbered gap that is preceded or followed by a non zero even numbered gap The sum of the gap parameters must be greater than zero Pen width unit selection command WU type This command selects the unit to be used by Pen Width PW command The type parameter specifies how the width parameter of the Pen Width PW command is interpreted 0 interprets as Metric and interprets as Relative 118 5 7 CHARACTER GROUP When you have created a vector graphic and want to add text you can either enter normal mode to add text to your image or you can print text from within the GL 2 mode If this is your first experience with GL 2 you should know that the term label is used throughout this section to indicate the printing of text The information in this section enables you to perform the following Position and print labels us
72. efined fill index ignored 21 LaserJet III pattern pattern type ignored For types 3 and 4 The line spacing is given in current units and is measured along the x axis A zero value gives a solid fill and a negative value invalidates the command The default value is 1 of the distance to P2 If the current units are plotter units turning scaling on or moving and P2 has no effect on the spacing If user units are used the spacing varies as and P2 moved turning scaling off fixes the spacing in the plotter unit equivalent to the current user unit The line angle is measured counterclockwise from the positive x axis In cross hatching the two set of lines are at 90 e The lines are drawn using the current pen and line type For type 10 the shading level is expressed as a percentage of black 015 white 100 is black 113 For type 11 the fill index is as specified in command RF if an RF command has not been given solid fill is used For type 21 the pattern type is a number between and 6 corresponding to the patterns defined in the standard mode If any parameter or combination is outside the values in the table the command is ignored Line attributes command LA kind value kind value kind value 1 This command specifies how line ends and line joins are physically shaped Use this command when drawing lines thicker than 0 35 mm The relation between and meaning of the parameters ar
73. elect a font is to simply describe what font attributes you want Remember selecting a font does not modify a font You can t get bold or 14 point characters if you don t have a bold or 14 point font in the printer In listing the attributes you want it will help you to prioritize them the same way your LaserPrinter 4 does Your printer ranks the various attributes a font can have this way from most to least important orientation symbol set spacing proportional or monospaced pitch characters per inch font height in points style italic or upright stroke weight light to bold typeface 63 The laser printer just zips down this chain of attributes one by one eliminating fonts that don t match what you want until it gets down to one unique font that matches your request If the printer matches down to say style or weight but can go no further it will give you its closest font to your request And if you don t specify a particular value for some attribute the printer assumes you want the value that attribute had in the ast font you specified or the default value if you ve just turned on the printer This can save you some effort if the font you want has an attribute the same as the current font you don t have to specify that attribute again Orientation Portrait orientation prints text across the width of a page Landscape orientation prints text sideways up the length of a page The Star LaserPrinte
74. emporary status you give to a font will apply only to the font you last specified using one of the font ID commands described above When your printer s memory gets stuffed with fonts you can also use this command to delete some of them You can only delete fonts you ve downloaded as internal and cartridge fonts are never deleted No text will get lost when you delete a font even when that font is on an unprinted page in the printer s memory 75 To control fonts you send this command c n For one of the numbers from this table of functions A FUNCTION 0 zero Delete all temporary and permanent fonts 1 Delete all temporary fonts another way to delete all temporary fonts is to send a reset command 2 Delete just the font with the most recently specified ID 3 Delete just the last character of the font you have downloaded 4 Make the current font ID temporary 5 Make the current font ID permanent 6 Make a temporary copy of the current font A bit of explanation about that last function 6 When you give a font ID to any font you first need a temporary copy of that font in memory That copy is already there for downloaded fonts But you will need function 6 to create a temporary copy of an internal or cartridge font Here s how to assign ID numbers to an internal or cartridge font You first select the font then send the Font ID command to give it an ID number and finally copy the font in
75. ently contains the right size of paper the display will ask you to insert the appropriate size of paper Also the Page Length command puts all margins back to their defaults So after you send it check whether you have to send any of the following margin setting commands 47 4 3 2 Side margins Margin settings define that part of the page on which the printer can print You set side margins to particular columns The width of acolumn differs for each font depending on its pitch Ten pitch Courier for example puts column 30 three inches from the left edge of the page column 0 But 12 pitch Prestige Elite puts column 30 just two and a half inches in You cannot set the left margin further over than the right margin Use the following command to set the left margin setting to be the column number where you want the left margin to start lt ESC gt Similarly to set the right margin you send this command with your desired column number lt ESC gt amp If you want to put both left and right margins back to the printer s printable limits in other words to clear the side margins send this command ESC 9 4 3 3 Top margin Vertically the LaserPrinter confines its printing to its text length which should always be less than its page length Both are measured in lines You can change the meaning of a line with line spacing commands described later in this chapter When you
76. es the current polygon or subpolygon and remains in polygon mode all commands sent following but before a PM2 or the next 1 are stored as one subpolygon Mode 2 closes current polygon or subpolygon and exits polygon mode Fill rectangle absolute command x v This command fills the rectangle defined by current cursor position and using the current fill The pen up down status is not affected by this command and the rectangle is drawn regardless of the pen status This command clears the polygon buffer then uses the buffer to draw Fill rectangle relative command RR dx dv Same as RA except that the coordinates are relative This command clears the polygon buffer then uses it to draw Fill wedge command WG radius start angle sweep angle chord angle This command draws a filled wedge see EW command This command clears the polygon buffer and uses the buffer to draw 112 5 6 LINE AND FILL ATTRIBUTES GROUP Anchor corner command AC The default is 0 0 and anchors the fill to the origin of the current coordinate system Fill type command FT param param2 1 The relation between these three parameters and the meanings are given in the table below type fill param param2 solid default ignored ignored 2 solid ignored ignored 3 hatched line spacing line angle 4 cross hatched line spacing line angle 10 gray shading level ignored 11 user d
77. f boldness though not many fonts exploit that range Send this command to select a primary font with your desired stroke weight lt ESC gt sn B in which you replace n with a number from 7 meaning light to 7 very bold You need the negative sign to get the lighter weights A weight of 0 zero produces medium print To select the stroke weight for the secondary font use the same numbers with this command lt gt n B An incidental note You will likely use optional fonts to give you boldface so probably don t need to know this But it s possible to print bold without even having a bold font in the printer You just print the text you want in bold two times with the overprint offset by 4 decipoints So you can use the command lt ESC gt amp a n to back up you just need to know the width in decipoints of what you want overprint n a monospaced pitch font like Courier that s easy just keep track of how many characters you print In a proportional font you d keep track of the decipoints by using a character width table After backing up 4 decipoints less than the total text width you just print your text again 71 Typeface The last attribute you can give to characters is their typeface The design of characters is what font designers often think of as the main determinant for a font But when you select a laser printer font typeface sits at the bottom of the list To assign the particular face yo
78. faces font sizes placement of graphics and regular features You build the specifications you want in templates standard page designs you later simply call up on your screen and fill in with text e Some desktop publishing systems such as Aldus s PageMaker are page oriented you put each page together individually These are great for shorter documents such as newsletters brochures and letters Other systems suchas Xerox s Ventura Publisher are document oriented That makes them better suited to technical manuals and long proposals or reports that go through many drafts Other ways in which such systems differ include whether they show on your screen what you will get on paper code based programs don t how well they handle pictures and how hard they are to learn Think about your needs before choosing a desktop publishing system A few of today s computer programs let you see several different font sizes and typefaces on your computer screen That capability is necessary if you want to see on screen exactly what will print on your Star LaserPrinter 41 Desktop publishers call this capability WYSIWYG you see is what you get When you design your pages don t vary font size just to fit text into the space available Go with a size that s easy to read and be consistent Never be tempted to use all uppercase letters When you want to highlight text switch to a bold font or draw a box around it
79. filenamed DOWNLOAD BAT To load the regular upright font you make sure the printer is online then after your computer s A prompt you type DOWNLOAD CN100RPN R8P When the program asks for the font ID number you key in a number between and 32767 Then when the program asks whether you want the font stored permanently or temporarily you type either P or T a temporary font disappears if you press the printer s RESET button Finally the program asks if you want to print a sample of the font and you reply Y or N for yes or no 37 You then do the same for the italics and boldface files for example typing for the italics font DOWNLOAD CN 100IPN R8P The prompts will be the same but you have to remember to use different font ID numbers for the upright italic and boldface fonts 3 4 7 Downloading a font example two Example two is for a computer running Aldus Corporation s PageMaker desktop publishing program with Microsoft Windows PageMaker provides a print driver called HPPCL DRV and a program called PCLPFM EXE which creates the data it needs to print a given font To create font data for your Century Schoolbook fonts at the A gt prompt you type PCLPFM CN100 R8P The asterisk a wildcard character indicates that PCLPFM is to create a data file for all three fonts regular italics and bold The program asks if you want to create a file called APPNDWIN INI to append into the Windows font menu file type
80. haracter prints with the same width But if you specify proportional spacing the design of each character determines its width To define how you want your primary font spaced send this command lt ESC gt sn P in which for n you put 0 zero to get monospaced or one to get proportional spacing If you specify proportional spacing it doesn t matter if you also specify pitch because spacing is a higher priority font attribute The printer will just ignore the pitch request To define spacing for your secondary font use the same numbers and just flip the parenthesis ESC s n P Pitch Pitch defines how many characters per inch you want for a monospaced pitch font Your Star LaserPrinter 4III s internal monospaced pitch fonts have settings of 10 12 or 16 66 characters per inch Cartridge or downloaded fonts with monospaced pitches often have other settings for characters per inch To select the pitch you want for the primary font send this command ESC sn H where for n you put in how many characters per inch you want For example ESC s 12H will pack twelve characters into each inch The corresponding pitch command for the secondary font is lt ESC gt s n H 69 You use a different command instead of these for general character pitch setting This command since it doesn t have parentheses covers both the primary and secondary fonts It looks like this lt ESC gt amp k n S For
81. hat s there you send a form feed command in line 160 And finally line 170 uses the font control command to make the current font permanent and then delete all temporary fonts 77 4 5 10 Example Assigning font numbers Now let s do a program in BASIC First we ll assign font numbers to the Courier and Line Printer resident fonts and to a cartridge font IBM PC Courier Then we ll print samples of each font 100 LPRINT CHR 27 8U 110 LPRINT CHR 27 s0Op10h12vOsOb3T 120 LPRINT CHR 15 130 LPRINT CHR 27 c1D 140 LPRINT CHR 27 c6F 150 LPRINT CHR 27 8U 160 LPRINT CHR 27 s0p16 66h7v0s0bOT 170 LPRINT CHRS 15 180 LPRINT CHRS 27 c2D 190 LPRINT CHRS 27 c6F 200 LPRINT 5 27 100 210 LPRINT CHR 27 sOplOhl2vOsOb3T 220 LPRINT CHR 15 230 LPRINT CHRS 27 c3D 240 LPRINT CHR 27 c6F 250 LPRINT CHRS 27 1X 260 LPRINT Font 1 Resident Courier 270 LPRINT CHRS 27 2X 280 LPRINT Font 2 Resident Line Printer 290 LPRINT CHR 27 3X 300 LPRINT Font 3 Cartridge PC Courier 310 LPRINT CHR 27 1X 320 LPRINT CHR 12 Line 100 and 110 calls the internal Courier font and line 120 makes it the primary font Line 130 gives it font ID number 1 and line 140 makes it temporary Lines 150 through 190 do the same thing for the Line Printer font and lines 200 through 240 for the cartridge font Notice that the cart
82. he easiest way to control your Star LaserPrinter 4III is through its control panel as explained in your Star LaserPrinter Operations Manual When your printer is online connected to and under the control of your computer its control panel display shows you the printer s status For example the READY light blinks when the printer is warming up The DATA light comes on whenever the printer is holding data it hasn t printed yet When you press the ON LINE button the printer changes from normal to offline mode and cannot accept data from your computer When the printer is offline you can use the other panel buttons For instance if you press the TEST gt button for two seconds and release it just after STATUS SHEET is displayed when the laser printer is offline it finishes printing the current page and then feeds in and prints a status sheet Some buttons on the panel let you perform two functions Holding one of those buttons down rather than quickly pressing it selects a different operation For example holding down the TEST gt button for over five seconds makes the Star LaserPrinter 4 print its font list 13 2 1 2 Parameter settings From the panel you can also change the parameters that define how your printer works Parameter just means variable If you re familiar with earlier kinds of printers you ll understand that laser printer parameters control pretty much the same things D P switches do A DIP
83. he fill mode parameter specifies how the printer will render filled characters to the following parameter values 0 Specifies solid fill using the current pen and edging with the specified pen or current pen if the edge pen parameter is not specified Specifies edging with the specified pen or current pen if the edge pen parameter is not specified Characters are filled only if they cannot be edged bitmap or stick characters using the edge pen 2 Specifies filled characters using the current fill type refer to the FT command The currently selected pen is used Characters are not edged If the edge pen parameter is specified it is ignored 3 Specifies filled characters using the current fill type refer to the FT command The currently selected pen is used Characters are edged with the specified pen or current pen if the edge pen parameter is not speci fied For characters that are to be edged the edge pen parameter indicates the pen that will be used to edge the character If this parameter is 0 the characters are not edging If this is 1 black edging is selected Character plot command CP spaces lines This command moves the current point horizontally by the value of spaces and vertically by the value of lines Horizontal movement is to the right when spaces is positive and to the left when it is negative Vertical movement is down when lines is positive and up when it is negative CP command
84. he printer to the initial defaults before starting a print job It s a good idea for you to follow the same practice just to make sure you get the settings you want 44 When you want to set all your laser printer s parameters back to their initial default values some people call this initializing the printer send this command lt gt The printer will finish printing any pages left in its memory before resetting the parameters Resetting clears unneeded temporary fonts from your printer s memory Any permanent fonts or macros you have down loaded however will still be there after you send a reset command Permanent and temporary fonts are described at the end of this chapter s Controlling Fonts section 4 2 5 Example Printer controls Let s see what happens when we put these commands together Say you have just turned on your laser printer What happens when you send the following commands to your printer lt ESC gt z lt ESC gt lt ESC gt amp 2h 2X As a BASIC program these would look like this NEW 10 WIDTH LPT1 255 20 LPRINT 5 27 z 30 LPRINT CHR 27 E 40 LPRINT CHR 27 amp 12h2X RUN First if it is working properly the printer prints a test print with all the characters in its default font Courier Next the printer sets all its parameter values including feed selection and number of copies to their initial settings The last
85. hen restores them when the macro 15 finished Again when the macro is done the print position will be just where it was before you ran the macro Turn on automatic macro This option automatically runs the last specified macro on every page you print You can use this option to reproduce the same design on each page a logo or form design perhaps You can have more than one automatic macro As with the macro option this one saves current parameters and print position and restores them when the macro is finished An automatic macro will terminate if you change orientation or page length Turn off automatic macro Starting with the current page this option terminates the last specified automatic macro Delete all macros This option removes all macros and automatic macros from printer memory even macros you have defined as permanent with option 10 below 94 7 Delete temporary macros This option also deletes temporary automatic macros 8 Delete last specified macro 9 Make last specified macro temporary 10 Make last specified macro permanent 4 9 3 Example Macros The following program loads and runs a macro The macro moves an inch and a half right and down three inches from the top left corner of the page where it prints a 25 percent gray scale bar It then ejects the paper 100 LPRINT CHRS 27 amp f6X 110 LPRINT CHRS 27 amp f1Y 120 LPRINT CHRS 27 amp f0OX 130 LPRINT CHR 27 p450
86. her in one command lt 5 gt s Op 16 66h 8 5v Os Ob OT The BASIC statement we could send to select our desired font would look like this 100 LPRINT CHR 27 s0p16 66h8 5v0sO0bOT And assuming we have such a font in our printer we d get font that looks Like this sentence for our footnotes 73 4 5 6 Underline Underlining is printing feature not a font attribute You can underline in two ways as a print feature or with the _ underline character If you backspace and use the underline character however you often find the underline doesn t come out the same length as your text The underline command works better When you turn on the underline feature this way the printer will underline all subsequent printable charac ters including spaces Send this command to turn on the underlining mode lt ESC gt amp d n D in which for you put 0 zero to get fixed underline or 3 to get floating underline And send this command to turn off the underline mode ESC 2 4 5 7 How to print Escape sequences and control codes You use both Escape sequences and control codes to print So how do you print Escape sequences and control codes But you actually can print commands and in two different ways You would do this when you want to see everything exactly as it is sent to the printer for example to debug a string of text and commands that doesn t print the way you think it should The Tran
87. ick overview now because you ll meet these terms on the control panel s program menu Font attributes a preview Orientation portrait or landscape as described earlier is usually thought of as one attribute of a font it s not really a page formatting issue Besides orientation the fonts with which you print have these attributes Symbol set is sometimes called character set which can be confusing since some people say character set when they mean a font Symbol sets are subgroups of a font s symbols that are most appropriate for particular countries such as the UK France Latin America ii or Japan X Spacing and pitch are linked Characters can be spaced on the line propor tionally so a narrow letter such as i takes less room than a wide letter like W Or characters can be spaced all the same width twelve characters to the inch is the monospaced spacing called 12 pitch 25 Point size defines how big characters will print such 10 or 12 points high Style defines whether characters print in upright or italic style Stroke weight defines how bold a typeface prints Finally typeface itself means the artistic design of a font Your printer s internal typefaces include Courier and Line Printer With the Star LaserPrinter you can also use Roman Prestige H Gothic L Gothic Orator and hundreds more typefaces which you load into the printer from cartridge or computer disk When you enable font
88. ines hatching patterns fill types 3 and 4 arcs circles and edges of polygons rectangles and wedges This command does not affect solid fill types labels stroked characters or edges of characters There are three types of screen fill shaded fill user defined raster fill and predefined cross hatch patterns The meanings of and relation between parameters are as given in the following table Type Meaning Opt2 0 no screening ignored ignored 1 shaded shading percentage ignored between 0 white and 100 black 2 user defined raster index the pen forthe 0 black pen see RF black pixels is selected 1 current pen as follows 21 predefined fill type ignored Without parameters this command turns off screening If opt and or opt2 is missing the previous and appropriate default values are used 117 With parameters this command selects the screening fill to be used for all vectors all lines except labels and stroked characters Transparency mode command TR n The transparency mode defines how the white areas of the source graphics image affect the destination graphics image The parameter n specifies whether transparency mode is on 1 or off 0 In the transparency mode white source dots do not change the destination pixel in the opaque mode non transparency mode such dots white out the destination pixel Note the similarity to the standard ESC n command but also not
89. ing any font Change label size slant and direction Designate and select standard and alternate fonts Print with proportional and monospaced fonts Work with the character cell Alternate font definition command AD kind value kind value This command defines an alternate GL 2 font and its characteristics font spacing pitch height style stroke weight and typeface It allows the font characteristics to be assigned to the secondary alternate font definition Use this command to set up an alternate font that you can easily access when labeling The kind parameter specifies the characteristic for which you are setting a value see the following table Kind Characteristic Default value Description 1 Symbol set 277 Roman 8 2 Font spacing 0 Monospaced 3 Pitch 9 Characters per inch 4 Height 11 5 Font point size 5 Style Upright Upright 6 Stroke weight 0 Medium 7 Typeface 48 Stick fixed vector The value parameter defines the characteristics of the characteristic specified by the kind parameter 119 Character fill mode command CF fill mode edge pen This command specifies the way scalable fonts are filled and edged bitmap and Stick fonts cannot be edged and can be filled only with raster fill shading or cross hatch patterns Scalable characters may be filled with any of the fill patterns specified by the FT command shading hatching cross hatching and user defined raster fill patterns T
90. ion settings which in turn override the user default settings which in turn override the factory settings 14 Factory settings are programmed into the Star LaserPrinter when it is built at the factory Your printer keeps the factory settings for its parameters in ROM they never change You can copy them into the current settings or any other settings as needed But the only way you can return to the factory defaults is from the control panel no commands do this A few factory default settings are as follows Item Factory default setting Emulation HP LaserJet III Feeder Multi purpose tray Number of Copies 1 Orientation Portrait Font 10 pitch 12 point Courier internal Lines inch 6 lines per inch The user default settings are the normal default settings The printer keeps them even when you turn off the power There are two settings Mode and Mode 2 The Mode is the normal default set on power up or hard reset You can select either Mode or Mode 2 by using PROGRAM button in normal offline mode When you turn on the printer these user default settings get copied into the initial and current parameter settings You probably will not often change the Star LaserPrinter 41175 initial set tings sometimes called session settings You ll likely only change them when you want to use a different printer emulation than normal These initial settings stay the same as the user default settings until you change them O
91. k after everything their computers send their printers But many of us small business people and home computer users not to mention the wizards who write those software packages want to benefit from all the new features offered by our printers Do you want complete control over the characters and images you print This manual provides the software help you need to get the most from your LaserPrinter 4111 Though this Applications Manual is really intended for intermediate to advanced computer users we ve tried to accommodate relative novices too The information is organized so you can walk through the general theory underlying printer programming before dancing into specific details It makes sense therefore to read the first three chapters before jumping into the middle There s a good reason to read each chapter from its start too People learning how to use a new printer often find the terminology a barrier So instead of burying what may be new jargon in a Glossary at the back we define each new term the first time it appears The whole first part of the chapter on fonts for example defines different aspects of a font a collection of characters of the same size and style What s in this manual n Getting to Know Your Star LaserPrinter 41 we provide a list of the features that make this a splendid printer to help you choose which features you want to exploit There s a bit on how laser printers work inside and
92. ke A spooler provides a separate temporary memory space that holds the documents to be printed and is particularly handy in a multi user system Some page makeup programs automatically download each font as needed then flush that font from printer memory to make room for the next font This approach can make good sense if you re sharing your printer with other people in a computer network It keeps the printer s RAM from becoming overloaded However the downloading time can significantly slow down your printer s throughput More typically you will download a font in the morning perhaps with the MS DOS COPY command before you print your first document and that font will then stay in the printer s memory If you use a single downloaded font or macro throughout the day you will find it most efficient to keep it in the laser printer s memory You definitely should download fonts this way if you use a print spooler If you re in a network however make sure you don t download duplicate fonts How many downloadable fonts can you have in one document That s not so easy to answer Most of your laser printer s memory is not available for storing fonts because it has to store each page before printing it as well as any macros or overlays you are using 39 To see how much memory is available for extra fonts put the printer offline and press the TEST button to print a status sheet Your printer will beep and show a c
93. low order 134 Symbol Name ID Number Norwegian ISO 60 OD BRESEREXEXERESESES o c 112 p rs L pu ps 69 95 7 7 t3 ng psi 100 101 102 103 104 105 ni 5 106 109 Shs pall rz 110 e 135 Symbol Name ID Number Roman Extension OE c rs 112 ru rs rs 2 Ee 2 Tun rd 3 M Um 99 _ 115 100 116 Ei 69 101 117 T 103 119 nr 9 5 102 18 105 121 104 _ 120 cal Em 106 _ 122 5 rd 107 _ 123 ra E 77 109 125 110 15 31 79 1954 111 127 136 Symbol Name ID Number French ISO 25 OF ae cd pale 112 4 2 n 50 66 98 1 ES 99 115 5 169 __ 85 pz 40 100 101 118 102 119 103 120 104 121 105 9 rx pi rs re 122 106 A
94. ly a certain number of lines send the command lt ESC gt amp anR in which for you enter the number of lines you wish to move the print position So to move to line 45 measured from the top edge of the page you send the command 45 But to move 45 lines down from the current print position you send lt ESC gt 45 55 To move the print position vertically a certain number of decipoints send the command ESC amp a n V in which you enter the number of decipoints you wish to move the print position down or precede the number with a or sign if you want to move up or down from the current position Finally you can move a number of dots down from the top edge of the page or you can move a number of dots up or down from the current print position To move the print position up or down an absolute or relative number of dots send the command lt ESC gt p n Y in which for n you put either the absolute number of dots down or preceded by a or sign the relative number of dots up or down from the current position So to move 20 dots down you send the command ESC p 20Y And to move 20 dots up you send ESC 20 4 4 10 Combining move commands One thing about moving the print position with the above commands is that they let you think of your page in terms of Cartesian coordinates All we mean is that you can combine horizontal and vertical movemen
95. ly to the right The user coordinate system is not affected by this command This command does not change the current pen location only its coordinates The coordinates of P1 and P2 are not changed so P2 will be outside the picture frame when angle is 90 or 270 The IP command should be used after rotation to correct the situation The coordinates of the points defining the soft clip window are not changed and the window is rotated Scale command SC xmin xmax ymin type left bottom Or SC xmin xfact ymin vfact where ymin xfact and yfact parameters are the real The type parameter is the clamped integer which be 0 to 2 The left and bottom parameters are the clamped real 0 to 100 104 The meanings of and relationships between the parameters are If type parameter is 0 as specified or by default SC defines antisotropic scaling the first form of the command is assumed and the last two param eters left and are ignored even if present ymin become the user coordinates of P1 and the coordinates of P2 If parameter is 1 SC defines isotropic scaling the first form of the command is assumed and parameters left and bottom or defaults are used xmin vmin become the user coordinates of point Q1 and xmax ymax the user coordinates of point Q2 defined as follows the rectangle whose diagonal is Q1
96. mand IP Ply P2x 2 1 This command sets control points and P2 is defined but not P2 P2 tracks to maintain the same relative position The default location of P1 is the lower left corner of the picture frame the default location of P2 is the upper right corner This command affects scaling and all commands which define a size as a percentage of the distance between P1 and P2 102 The results of the following commands depend on the positions of P1 and P2 DR FT IW LB LT PW RO SC SR WU Input relative 1 and P2 command IR P7 rx PI ry P2rx P2rv This command establishes new or default locations for the scaling points and P2 relative to the picture frame size and P2 are used by the Scale SC command to establish user unit scaling IR can also be used in advanced techniques such as printing mirror images enlarging reducing drawings and enlarging reducing relative character size or changing label text direction The coordinates of points and P2 are expressed as percentage of the width height of the picture frame Input window command IW vll xur yur This command sets the position and size of the soft clip window and determines the effective clip window as the intersection of the printable area the logical page the picture frame and the soft clip window The meanings of parameters are xil x coordinate of lower left corner of soft clip wind
97. mbol sets and 2 You can designate any two fonts whether internal cartridge or downloaded as primary and secondary The way you show you re talking about a primary font in an Escape sequence is to follow the lt ESC gt symbol with a left parenthesis For example ESC s 10 H means you want your primary font pitched at ten characters to the inch Typing a right parenthesis instead means you are referring to the secondary font lt ESC gt s 10H You define a font as primary or secondary as you select it To make a font your primary or secondary font you use font description Escape sequences such as those just above specifying the attributes you want 61 If you don t explicitly indicate what attributes you want for the primary secondary font the printer will use the same default font for both This default font s attributes include the Roman 8 symbol set 10 pitch spacing 12 point height upright style medium weight and Courier typeface After your primary font is selected you can choose it for printing by sending this Shift In control code lt SI gt All the text you send after that command will print in the primary font Your laser printer shifts to the secondary font when you send this Shift Out code lt SO gt 4 5 3 Assigning font ID numbers The second way to define and select fonts is by using font ID numbers You may prefer this method if you frequently use many fonts While not as short
98. mbols ISO 17 Spanish ISO 2 IRV OCR B Extension ISO 10 Swedish ISO 16 Portuguese PS Math ISO 84 Portuguese Microsoft Publishing Ventura Math ISO 85 Spanish Desk Top Math 8 symbols IBM PC Set Roman 8 Bar Code EAN UPC IBM PC Extension Windows 66 10 100 IBM PC US 11Q ECMA 94 7Bit LIU IBM PC Denmark Norway 12U PC 850 13 Ventura International 14J Ventura US 15 Pi font symbols To select a symbol set code for your secondary font flip the parenthesis lt ESC gt and for n substitute your choice from codes above Selecting the current or default symbol set Your printer can use either the primary or the secondary font as its current font And that current font has its current symbol set Your printer also remembers its default font and symbol set which are Courier with Roman 8 unless you ve changed their initial parameter values through the control panel menu The following command lets you select one of those symbol sets for your primary font lt ESC gt n For n enter one of the following selection values for your primary font n VALUE SELECTION 0 zero or 1 one Selects the default symbol set 2 _ Selects the current font s symbol set this forces the printer to select its best matching font 3 Selects all of the default font s attributes not just symbol set Similarly you can select either the default or the current symbol set for your
99. mmand before you send text for printing The table below should help you pick the right number of lines Decide which orientation and paper size you want then use the under your preferred lines inch 46 ORIENTATION PAPER SIZE 6LINES INCH B8LINES INCH Portrait Executive 60 80 Portrait Letter 66 88 Portrait A4 70 93 Portrait Legal 84 112 Landscape Executive 43 58 Landscape Letter 51 68 Landscape A4 49 66 Landscape Legal 58 Printing landscapes on legal paper is trickier First set on portrait mode and send the command lt ESC gt amp 84P and then change the orientation to landscape example Say you want to manually print legal size pages at eight lines per inch The following commands combine manual feeding with that page length ESC amp 2h 112P If your command specifies a page length different than the paper in the tray the printer will go offline and display a message asking for the proper tray After you change the tray press the ON LINE button to restart the printer It doesn t hurt to print short pages on long paper If you inadvertently print a legal size page onto executive or letter size paper the printer will scroll that page across two sheets If you have set the paper feeder from the control panel to AUTO SELEC TION a select page length command lt ESC gt amp n P will automatically select the cassette which contains the paper selected by the command If no cassette curr
100. n the other hand your software will probably change the current settings many times within the same document with every change of font or print style 2 1 4 How to change parameters With the printer offline if you press the PROGRAM button the printer goes into program mode You can then step through the laser printer s four levels of program menu to configure your printer That s the process of changing certain printer settings so your computer and printer can commu nicate properly It s actually pretty easy Flipping through and setting parameters from the panel is described in detail in the Star LaserPrinter Operations Manual Basically all you do is press the lt or gt buttons to scroll through the se quence of possible parameters and values which is clearly shown on the panel display You press v when you want to go down and scroll through a lower menu level And you also press when you want to save a particular menu item as the value for a current parameter setting The two last menu headings let you load one version of the parameters into another version One moves the current parameter values into user default parameters The final menu option goes the other way letting you load the factory parameter settings as your current settings 2 2 CONTROLLING THE PRINTER In this section you ll meet two separate controls over how the Star LaserPrinter itself works The INTERFACE parameter controls
101. nd in general can select only approximate values of positive parameters In addition only one parameters has effect the width for monospaced fonts and the height for proportional fonts Character slant command SL tan slant angle This command specifies the slant at which labels are drawn The parameter is a tangent of the angle between the center line of a character and the vertical line Relative character size command SR width height This command specifies the size of characters as a percentage of the distance between and P2 Select standard font command SS This command selects the font currently designated as standard It has the same effect as the shift in lt SI gt is the string of a label command except that the shift remains in effect until an SA command 15 received Transparent data command TD mode mode clamped integer 0 normal 1 transparent This command defines how control characters are treated In the normal mode such characters perform their normal control functions and are not printed In the transparent mode all control characters are printed non printing characters print as spaces and do not perform their normal functions The normal mode is selected with 0 for the mode parameter and the trans parent mode is selected with 1 125 5 8 ESCAPE SEQUENCES IN GL 2 MODE When the following commands are given they have the same results whether the printer is in the standard m
102. ns too There easily could be four hundred or more possible symbols for any given font However the number of symbols printers store for a font is limited to 256 slots as in ASCII So some symbols or the order of some symbols can differ in any font Each unique selection and arrangement of symbols is a symbol set sometimes called a graphic set or character set The symbol at position 91 for example is an open bracket in the usual ASCII symbol set But the same position holds A capital A with an umlaut in the German symbol set 33 You probably won t change symbol sets very often unless you need special symbols for your trade or regularly write in a language other than English Your printer supports sets containing just symbols such as the Greek alphabet 3 logic symbols arrows the registered trademark symbol and so on 3 3 2 Default font attributes When you power on your printer the internal fonts start off with default attributes which you can change as needed The default symbol sets 15 Roman 8 Technically you can use any of the Star LaserPrinter 4 5 resident fonts when you send commands If you want a character that s not in the font you re using don t hesitate to grab it Just send the Escape sequences that select your desired symbol set print with it then go back to your original font 3 4 MANAGING FONTS You see which fonts are currently selected on your Star Lase
103. nt see Ime 129 6 1 Command 129 6 2 5 1 1 tite e Ire aoe 134 Getting to Know Your Star LaserPrinter This chapter introduces both the hardware and software aspects of the Star LaserPrinter AIII s personality from fonts and print engine to ASCII and Escape sequences 1 1 STAR LASERPRINTER 41 HARDWARE 1 1 1 Versatility Your Star Micronics Star LaserPrinter works with practically all commercial software programs and computers With features that go beyond Star s easy affordable 9 pin and fast quality printing 24 pin dot matrix printers the Star Laser Printer is the logical next step in the series of fine Star Micronics printers Your Star LaserPrinter 4III produces pages that look close to typeset quality with up to 90 000 dots per square inch no more NLQ near letter quality compromises The Star LaserPrinter produces four of those pages a minute These numbers transiate to about five times more resolution and about three times more speed than the average dot matrix printer Star s new printer is remarkably versatile You can print complicated forms widthwise if you want detailed graphs yourown customized typestyles digitized photographs other languages including Arabic and Japanese You can even print your letterhead and logo as you print your letter and reprint them directly onto
104. ode or the GL 2 mode lt ESC gt E the initialization IN command is executed the picture frame is set to its default size the frame anchor is set to its default position the plot size is set to its default size the page orientation is reset A reset command from the control panel will have the same effect lt ESC gt amp n the orientation of the picture frame is changed the picture frame 15 set to its default size the frame anchor is set to its default position the plot size 18 set to its default size lt ESC gt amp an P The printing direction command does not effect the orientation or position of the GL 2 picture frame ESC amp n P the picture frame is set to its default size the frame anchor is set to its default position the plot size is set to its default size and P2 are set to their default positions the cursor is set to the soft clip window is set to its default size the polygon buffer is cleared 126 lt ESC gt amp n A the picture frame is set to its default size the frame anchor is set to its default position the plot size is set to its default size and P2 set to their default positions the cursor is set to P1 the clip window is set to its default size the polygon window is cleared 127 128 Supplement This final chapter in your Star LaserPrinter 4 Applications Man
105. om mands having them parameters can be either required or optional Optional parameters are enclosed in brackets 1 e Separator s When you use parameters you must separate them with a comma space or in the case of a numeric parameter with a or sign Commas are recommended because some computers eliminate spaces especially when sending variables e Terminator All commands require a terminator GL 2 commands are terminated by a semicolon or the first letter of the next mnemonic The last command prior to exiting GL 2 mode must be terminated with a semico lon 97 5 1 1 Parameter formats You must give parameters in the format type of units required by each GL 2 command The required format is stated in the parameter table of each command s description and is described as follows Integer An integer from 2 147 483 648 to 2 147 483 647 The printer automatically rounds fractional parameters to the nearest integer Using a number outside the specified range causes an error Clamped integer An integer from 32 768 to 32 767 The printer automatically rounds fractional parameters to the nearest integer Sending a number outside this range does not cause an error but the number is clamped to the limits of the range Certain commands have parameters which are restricted to a smaller range These ranges are listed in the parameter tables for each command Sending a number outside the re
106. ommands 119 125 character description commands 82 83 character parameter 14 character position commands 82 character spacing See spacing circle command 107 columns 23 25 48 command summary 129 133 GL 2 commands 132 133 PCL commands 129 131 condensed 28 configuration 16 configuration settings 16 continuous form paper 20 control codes 8 41 printing 74 control panel 13 14 corona wire 4 Courier font 2 current settings 15 D DC1 DC3 protocol 18 default settings 15 descenders 28 desktop publishing 35 DIP switches 14 Display Functions command 75 76 double strike print 27 downloadable fonts 32 36 39 drum 4 DTR protocol 18 elite characters 29 emphasized print 27 emulations 11 Escape sequences 8 41 43 126 127 combining 42 43 GL 2 mode 126 127 printing 74 ETX ACK protocol 18 165 LF factory settings 15 feed selection 44 fill command 113 font attributes 25 27 29 34 63 default 34 See also font orientation pitch point size spacing stroke weight style symbol set typeface font control commands 61 78 font design 79 83 font header 80 81 font height 28 33 63 70 font ID numbers 62 76 80 font orientation 20 23 25 46 50 64 fonts 2 27 40 61 83 119 125 bit mapped 30 cartridge 31 32 36 downloadable 31 32 36 39 internal 30 31 managing 34 40 optional 36 outline 32 primary 61 122 scalable 2 31 secondary 61
107. ontally in increments of 1 10 1 12 or similar fractions of an inch pitch settings 1 48 or 1 120 inch line or column definitions 1 300 inch dots or 1 720 inch tenths of a point 24 These increments reflect the history of twentieth century printing Pitch referring to the number of characters printed in each horizontal inch derives from how typewriters space their characters Lines and columns were first used by earlier computer printers on which they are called horizontal and vertical motion indexes You already know about the Star LaserPrinter 4 being able to print 300 dots to the inch And the unit by whichtypesetters have measured text for centuries is the point about 1 72 of an inch One hint about moving the print position you can confuse yourself if you use more than one or two different units during the same session So decide beforehand how accurately you need to move the print position not forget ting any graphics you want to include Then stick to the unit s you choose The commands that move the print position in all these ways are described in chapter 4 2 4 CONTROLLING THE PRINTING The CHARACTER parameter defines font attributes and setup values if any for the Star LaserPrinter 4 A font s attributes or characteristics determine what that font will look like when it is printed The next chapter Fonts explores the details of all font attributes in more detail But let s have a qu
108. ontrol panel message if you try to overload its memory by downloading too many fonts It then will continue printing with the closest available font to that requested As a general rule you can include at least a dozen downloadable fonts in a document Added to the internal fonts that should be plenty it doesn t make good design to mix many typefaces A telltale sign of amateurish laser printing is too many fonts in one document To keep a wide variety of extra fonts in memory however many Star LaserPrinter 4III users especially those sharing the printer on a network prefer to add the optional board with the second megabyte of RAM 40 CHAPTER Printer C Language The Hewlett Packard LaserJet is an earlier kind of laser printer than your Star LaserPrinter You should have no trouble running most popular software packages as those programs likely can send LaserJet com mands Because the LaserJet III is a laser printer though its commands can give you more control over your Star LaserPrinter 4 1 than is possible with the other built in command sets Recognizing that reality we ve put examples into this chapter At the end of the chapter we describe how to create and use your own fonts and also how to save time by writing command macros 4 1 PRINTER CONTROL LANGUAGE 4 1 1 What do Printer Control Language look like The Star LaserPrinter 4III includes a dozen common control codes such as C
109. oordinates to greatly increase your printer s throughput Arc absolute command AA xc angle chord angle where xc indicates the x coordinate of center of arc vc is the y coordinate of center of arc angle is the angular size of arc from 360 to 360 and the chord angle is the angle subtended by chord from 0 5 to 180 This command draws an arc using absolute coordinates from the current pen position as specified After drawing the arc the current pen position is at the end of the arc Arc relative command AR dxc angle chord angle where dxc indicates the x coordinate of center of arc relative to the current location dvc is the y coordinate of center of arc relative to the current location angle is the angular size of arc from 360 to 360 and the chord angle is the angle subtended by chord from 0 5 to 180 This command draws an arc using relative coordinates from the current pen position as specified After drawing the arc the current pen position is at the end of the arc 106 Absolute arc three point command xi vi xe ve chord angle 21 where xi indicates the x coordinate of intermediate point I yi is the y co ordinate of intermediate point I xe is the x coordinate of end point E and ye is the y coordinate of end point E The chord angle is the angle subtended by chord from 0 5 to 180 With the current position F this command draws an arc containing points F I and E
110. or screened vectors lines Without parameters this command resets all fill patterns to sold fill With only one parameter it resets the indicated pattern to solid fill With all parameters specified it defines a raster image consisting of height rows each containing width dots Symbol mode command SM character This command designates the character to be used as a marker or symbol Symbols are used only in conjunction with PA PD PE PR and PU commands a symbol is drawn at the point s specified by these commands regardless of the state of the pen The character parameter can be any character with decimal codes 33 58 60 126 161 and 254 Ifthe character parameter is not in the specified range the symbol mode is canceled otherwise character symbol is drawn as if it was character in a label centered at the point 116 Symbols are taken from the currently selected character set and are sized slanted and rotated in the same way as characters Select pen command SP pen number This command selects the printer s logical pen for subsequent plotting This command must be set in order to output Pen 0 15 white it is used when no drawing is required to draw white lines on a black fill with transparency off Pen is black values greater than are treated as 1 Screened vector command SV opt opt2 This command selects the type of screening area fill to be applied to vectors l
111. ormally enter each part of the command as a separate character This way you don t affect anything else happening on the computer You often send each code or character in the command by giving its position in the ASCII table as a decimal or hex number 1 2 7 A BASIC example Here s an example you can type in right now to clarify what we re saying It s written in Microsoft BASIC for a computer that uses the MS DOS operating system so if you have a different computer or BASIC you may have to translate a bit The LPRINT commands all send data to the printer If the data is something you want printed you just put it in quotation marks If the data is a control code you just say where it is in the ASCII table giving its position as a regular decimal number BASIC usually sends a carriage return after every 80 characters to keep the print position moving when it hits the end of a line Unasked for carriage returns can mess up your printing however so it s a good habit to put in a WIDTH statement as shown That lets us print over the whole page area The BEL control code ASCII code 7 is sent in BASIC as 7 The lt ESC gt code itself is CHR 27 And because we re using the character z as part of an lt ESC gt command we type CHR 112 instead of z So if you start BASIC and type these commands EW EXAMPLE 0 WIDTH LPT1 255 30 LPRINT CHRS 7 40 LPRINT CHRS 27 CHRS 112 50 END RUN
112. other a width of 840 will print them seven inches apart 4 4 5 Defining line depth The line depth sometimes called the vertical motion index specifies how far down a page the print position will move for each line feed You probably won t use the line depth as much as lines per inch Line depth can be more precise but it isn t as easy to calculate The line depth comes in multiples of 1 48th of an inch 52 The important fact about the line depth is that when you change it you changing the actual meaning of a When you increase the line depth you effectively decrease the number of lines per inch and increase the page length The command you send to set the line depth looks like this lt ESC gt amp n note that the character after the amp is a lower case L in which for n you can enter a number from 0 to 336 If is zero lines will be printed on top of each other and if 336 they will be printed 7 inches apart 4 4 6 Moving the PRINT position horizontally You can use three different units to move the print position horizontally columns space widths dots each 1 300th of an inch or tenths of a point decipoints Both columns and decipoints can be fractions to two decimal places such as 45 75 decipoints which provides a great degree of accuracy for graphics applications Moreover for each of these you can move the print position horizontally in two ways You can move
113. out The chapter then explains software in general terms including how to write control and Escape commands to make those features work Controlling Your Printer examines the parameters you give the Star LaserPrinter 4 to direct precisely how you want it to behave These let you control the printer manage page formats and specify what you want printed Formostofus the Fonts chapter will be useful how touse the fonts built into the LaserPrinter 4 plus those that come on cartridges or computer disks You may look at chapters 4 and 5 which cover Star LaserPrinter 4 commands Your LaserPrinter emulates imitates Hewlett Packard LaserJet III by accepting the same commands they do If you want to write or modify a program that uses the Hewlett Packard LaserJet III chapters 4 and 5 show how your Star LaserPrinter 4 can emulate to accordingly The chapter on Printer Control Language is longer and more detailed than the other That s because you are more likely to use laser printer commands than commands for vector graphics e The final Technical Supplement containing the command and character reference tables will probably get thumbed the most Conventions Incidentally one of those Technical Supplement tables suggests a couple of typographic conventions we ll use Base ten decimal numbers will gener ally be used here if we have to use base sixteen numbers hexadecimal expressly say so
114. ow vil y coordinate of lower left corner of soft clip window x coordinate of upper right corner of soft clip window yur y coordinate of upper right corner of soft clip window Page eject command The following commands cause a conditional page eject meaning that a page will be ejected if there is any printable data in the print buffer Reset command lt ESC gt E Page length command Page size command Orientation command Paper source command When page 15 ejected using one of the above commands the cursor position is set to the top of form on the new page 103 An alternate method of ejecting a page is the Form Feed command A Form Feed causes an unconditional page eject and advances the current active cursor position to the top of form on the next page The horizontal cursor position remains the same as before the page eject Rotate coordinate system command RO angle This command rotates and translates the plotter coordinate system The angle parameter is a clamped integer 0 90 180 or 270 degrees to obtain the following results with respect to the picture frame 0 Origin at lower left corner x axis horizontally to the right y axis vertically up 90 Origin at lower right corner x axis vertically up y axis horizontally to the left 180 Origin at upper right corner x axis horizontally to the left y axis vertically down 270 Origin at upper left corner x axis vertically down y axis horizontal
115. own condition When a appropriate command is given the paths are drawn as if they formed a single path which is not necessarily connected The Star LaserPrinter 4 has a buffer capable of storing 1500 points with pen up and down commands stored as points The following commands clear the polygon buffer and then use it to draw EA ER EW RA RR WG The following commands use the polygon buffer when in the polygon mode AA AR AT CI PA PD PE PR PU RT Other commands if given in the polygon mode are ignored If the polygon buffer overflows while executing a drawing or edging command EP is executed If the polygon buffer overflows while executing a filling command FP is executed Points that cannot fit in the buffer are ignored Edge rectangle absolute command EA This command draws a rectangle with the current cursor position as one corner and the diagonally opposite corner at x y This command clears the polygon buffer then uses the buffer to draw Edge polygon command EP This command draws the edge of the polygon stored in the polygon buffer parts with the pen down The contents of the buffer are not changed or deleted 110 Edge rectangle relative command ER dy This command is similar to the EA command except that the coordinates of the opposite corner relative to current cursor position are specified Edge wedge command EW radius start angle sweep angle chord angle
116. r electronic bulletin boards Fonts you get this way are in the public domain which means you don t need to pay a licence fee to use them Ask your Star LaserPrinter dealer about resources like these Desktop publishing with laser printers is fast changing territory and some Star Micronics staff people have found electronic bulletin boards and computer user groups quite helpful in keeping up with the changing pace If you invest a little time this way it may repay you well 1 1 3 How your laser printer communicates Your computer communicates with the Star LaserPrinter through either a parallel cable or one of two kinds of seria cable The printer s interface the link or boundary it shares with your computer defines whether the printer will accept characters and commands from your computer one byte or one bit at a time A bit is the smallest unit of computer or printer memory It has either a low or high electric charge which we represent with the digits 0 and Usually eight adjacent bits are grouped to form a byte Since a byte normally represents one character this string of bits 01000001 might represent the letter A The serial interface accepts just one bit at a time from your computer A parallel interface can handle a whole byte at once by moving data bits side by side along separate wires You choose which interface method you want to use by selecting it on the operator panel as explained in your
117. r 4 is more flexible about orientation than most other laser printers it lets you simply rotate any portrait font to the landscape orientation or vice versa To start you off when you change orientation the printer resets all its margins and its column and line definitions to their default settings When you want to select the opposite orientation send this command lt ESC gt amp n in which for n you put get portrait orientation to get landscape orientation 2 to get upside down portrait orientation or 3 to get upside down landscape orientation Notice the Zcharacter after the amp is a lowercase L 64 To select the direction in which characters raster graphics and fill patterns are printed use the following command lt ESC gt amp a n P in which for n you put to select the portrait direction 90 to select the landscape direction 180 to select the upside down portrait direction and 270 to select the upside down landscape direc tion Symbol sets a review Each font can have many symbol sets each being a subset of all the possible characters of the font These subgroups include different symbols for different nations or for lawyers or artists or mathematicians Any two symbol sets moreover may store the same symbol at a different font position in the printer s memory The default symbol set is Roman 8 which includes all ASCII characters plus dozens of accented letters But you can use any
118. r weights you will probably get skewing problems lines that print at an angle because of misfeeding For best results when your Star LaserPrinter 4 is first set up have the paper feeder squared for paper of at least 60 grams 20 pounds Lighter paper though cheaper isn t really the way to economize Want to print on your own preprinted letterhead Fine so long as your logo isn t thermographed Thick colored ink may look luxurious but it can also wind up stuck all over your printer s roller Stay away from any inks that soften at relatively low temperatures your printer fuses pages at 200 C This warning applies to colored paper too if it has been tinted with a low temperature dye When printing starts fading because the toner is low remove the cartridge and gently rock it back and forth half a dozen times Don t tip it up or the toner may spill out Redistributing the toner powder this way can keep the cartridge going for another tray of paper 21 e No question working with single label sheets is more convenient than with continuous label stock Laser printers are faster and produce better looking labels than other printers But laser printers which work by electrostatic photography rather than impact pressure put different stresses on label paper Each sheet has to bend over and through the guide rollers moreover fusing toner to the paper involves heat You can eliminate trouble by always feeding
119. rPrinter by printing a status sheet in offline mode as mentioned at the beginning of this chapter Another TEST mode menu item described in the Star LaserPrinter 4IIl Operations Manual also lets you print out a list of all the fonts available on the printer at any given moment 3 4 1 Selecting fonts Most popular software packages particularly word processors let you choose fonts from within the program They send the appropriate commands to the printer and you don t need to understand how they do it MultiMate uses pitch to identify different fonts for example while WordPerfect uses print formats The point is you may not even have to worry about selecting which font to use But not all packages do the job for you If you are in this situation you can select any font attribute mentioned above either from the control panel or by sending an Escape sequence command 34 If you use the control panel in program mode select CHARACTER Just press the gt button to get to the font attribute you want to set press v to get to its possible values press gt to scan through them and finally press v to slap in the value you want The procedures for selecting a font from a computer program is a bit more complicated These font selection methods are detailed in the next chapter 3 4 2 Hints Desktop publishing and page design Desktop publishing systems help you automate your specifications for margins cover design type
120. recommend at least 512K computer with a couple of disk drives a hard disk is better 36 Many commercial font management programs are now on the market including Insight Development s LaserControl Blaha Software s Hot Lead SoftCraft s LaserFonts and the PCL printer driver Microsoft s Windows These utility programs help you download fonts then let you access the fonts automatically from your word processor or other programs Most font files on disk that you buy to download into your printer have Escape sequences right in the file which simplify the process Usually all you have to do is copy the file from your computer into your printer you must assign a font ID number first If you download fonts with the MS DOS COPY utility make sure to use the COPY B option That will keep your computer from interpreting the data you send which sometimes produces badly shaped characters OK let s look at a couple of examples 3 4 6 Downloading a font example one Example one is for a computer running just MS DOS Say you ve bought Hewlett Packard s Century Schoolbook fonts and want to download the regular upright italics and boldface characters The HP disk labels for each file are CNIOORPN R8P CNIOOIPN R8P and CNIOOBPN R8P In case you re interested that s HP s code CeNtury 100 decipoints Regular or Italic or Bold ProportioNal Roman 8 symbol set Portrait Oneofthe disks you getalso contains a batch
121. rfect and the systems from Lotus Develop ment Corporation let you put printer Escape sequences before or right inside the document you want to print To turn on boldface for example you might hold down special keys on your keyboard often labelled CONTROL or ALT as you press another key Or you might use a special Function key such as F6 In fact to take real advantage of your Star LaserPrinter 411 5 special abilities you might opt for a word processor that lets you specify font changes easily WordPerfect and Microsoft Word are strong at this but are by no means the only good font manipulators If you have trouble using a particular program with your Star LaserPrinter you ll probably get answers most quickly by asking your software supplier how the program interacts with your printer In this manual we refer to programs fonts and other products sold by several companies Please realize that mentioning these products does not mean Star Micronics endorses them in any way 1 2 6 Sending your own printer commands Without a printer driver sending control codes and Escape sequences to your printer properly requires some knowledge of a programming language like BASIC or Pascal or at least of how to put such codes into a program With programming languages the computer doesn t act on the commands you put into a program until you tell it to run that program When you give a command to the printer from a computer program you n
122. ridge font has the IBM symbol set code 100 Lines 250 through 300 print out samples of the three fonts Finally line 310 resets the default to our internal Courier font and line 320 performs the final form feed to print the page 78 4 6 USING YOUR OWN FONTS 4 6 1 Font design is tedious A warning font design is an art Don t expect to turn out professional looking fonts in a few hours Sometimes though you have to build your own typeface even if you don t work with a company in the font selling business You may for example want to print your own customized company logo It means building up characters within a cell or grid perhaps 50 dots high and 35 wide lots of dots Because defining your own typeface is so tedious make sure you ve checked out as many downloadable fonts as you can find from font development companies The next handiest way to do the job is to ask around maybe where you bought your LaserPrinter 4III to see if you can get one of the font creating or font editing utility programs now on the market FontGen IV is one Keep an eye out too for new word processing tools that might save you the trouble of painstakingly figuring out details like kerning Even with aids like these building a custom font is an intricate process It calls for the creation of a family of up to 200 characters sharing a common design and proportional scheme and that s just for one type size No mean feat 4 6
123. rietary graphics packages use TIFF encoding when storing and transmitting graphic data 85 5 Send the commands which transfer the graphics data When transferring raster graphics data each line of raster data must be prefixed by the command lt ESC gt b W where gives the number of data bytes to follow the maximum is 255 before another such command is sent This data must follow the compression rules set in the previous command For instance a TIFF image interpreted in any way other than the TIFF format will produce very strange results Repeat sending lines of graphics data prefixed by the above command until the whole image has been transmitted 6 Send the command to end graphics To signal the end of graphic data transmission send the following command lt ESC gt r B There no parameters The LaserPrinter 4 is now in text mode A programming hint move your print position in dot increments whenever you re dealing with graphics It s easier than trying to calculate column widths or decipoints The Raster Height command specifies the height in pixels of the next raster graphic between the start graphics and stop graphics commands ESC rn T The value of n must be non negative if necessary it is truncated to the value of logical page length y coordinate of cursor This command causes all raster rows after the specified height to be clipped disregarded even if n 0 It forced
124. rinter it will print a z and that s all But if you send the lt ESC gt code just before the z then the printer will switch over to print self test Extending the control codes this way gives you many more commands to control your printer In fact these Escape sequences make up most of the Star Laser Printer s language In this book we ll leave spaces between characters when we show escape sequences You ll find ESC s 10h 12v 05 a bit more readable than ESC s0p10h12vO0s3T But remember that you are not to send those spaces if you send commands to the printer To sum up printer commands are of two types A control code 18 a single character command that tells your printer to do something like move down one line An Escape sequence controls a printer operation too but is more than one character long Since they are commands neither control codes nor escape sequences are usually printable characters 1 2 5 Printer drivers Most software packages already include the printer commands they need The programs that send commands to the printer so you don t have to enter them yourself are called printer drivers Many programs ask you to install or configure your printer which usually means keying into a menu the particular setup information describing your Star LaserPrinter 4 You enter such things as how you want to underline alter line spacing or move to a new print position Some programs such as WordPe
125. s That command would look like this lt ESC gt c 1500A To print that area with a 25 percent gray scale pattern the commands you send would be ESC c 25G ESC c 2P But to print an area filled with the horizontal bar pattern the commands you send would be ESC c 1G ESC c 3P You could combine these commands as lt ESC gt c 1g 3P 92 4 9 MACROS 4 9 1 Using macros There s a great shortcut that simplifies the task of sending commands to your LaserPrinter 4 use macros macro is a single control code which you can define yourself that does the work of a whole long series of printer commands Any command can go into a macro Putting macros together to automatically repeat sequences of tasks is like using a real programming language Your Star Micronics dealer may know of some pre written macros already available for the Star LaserPrinter 4 You ll find macros especially handy for creating letterheads and business forms and also for setting tabs subscripts and superscripts Your printercan store up to 32 macros without the optional RAM expansion To manage printer memory you can make a macro either temporary it disappears when you reset the printer or permanent it disappears only when you turn off the printer You assign each macro an ID number when you first define it Use this Specify Macro ID command to specify in place of the ID number of the macro to which you wish to refer
126. s high 5 Epson gives you a choice of either italics characters or IBM character graphics 1 2 3 Control codes The ASCH table shows symbols like J or 2 the way they actually print on the laser printer But ASCII includes more than just printable characters none of the control code commands at the beginning of the table actually print Instead when your computer sends a control code to the laser printer it makes your printer do other things such as sound its beeper Control codes mostly handle communications between your computer and the printer at the lowest level at cable level For example a couple of control codes make sure the printer buffer your printer s storage memory doesn t overflow In this book we ll indicate control codes enclosed by angle brackets to their abbreviations in the table FF means the Form Feed control code which advances the printer to the next page just as the PRINT button does 1 2 4 Escape sequences Control code 27 lt ESC gt or Escape is a particularly important one for printers To tell your printer all the things you might need setting margins saying where to print choosing a particular font starting graphics and so on requires many more than just two or three dozen control codes So the lt ESC gt control code has a special meaning lt ESC gt means the next character specifies a command not something to be printed Therefore if you send just the character z to the p
127. s the pen to be used 0 or 1 see SP Number of fraction bits from 26 to 26 When there are no parameters this command updates the carriage return point When there are parameters it draws lines by sending a shorter string of data than other commands since al parameters other than flags are encoded In the polygon mode the coordinates are stored in the polygon buffer The encoding uses base 64 if not otherwise specified by flag 7 Plot relative command PR dx 4 2 2 dxn dyn This command establishes relative plotting and moves the pen to specified points with each move relative to the current pen location 108 PU x 1 x2 2 xn yn This command is the same as PA except that the pen up flag is set and no lines are drawn If there is no argument this is the only effect of the command The coordinates are interpreted as absolute if the command was not preceded by a PR command otherwise the coordinates are treated as relative Relative arc three points command RT dvi dxe dye chord angle Same as AT except that the coordinates are relative 109 5 5 POLYGON GROUP There is a special mode of operation the polygon mode in which many commands are not executed but store the path they would otherwise draw in the polygon buffer The path is stored by storing the coordinates of all point traversed together with the pen up d
128. secondary font You also may want to use the same symbol set for both primary and secondary fonts 67 To do these tasks you can send the following command to select which symbol set you want for your secondary font ESC For enter one of the values from this table n VALUE SELECTION 0 zero Selects the default symbol set 1 one Selects same symbol set as primary font 2 Selects the current font s symbol set 3 Selects all the default font s attributes not just symbol set Example Symbol set commands Let s take a short look at how you use these commands Here s the scenario You are already using the Line Printer typeface but want to use the German symbol set as you are writing a report for your Berlin office and need umlaut characters for several names in the report Then in the report you decide to use a proprietary product name so want to nip out to grab the symbol on a legal cartridge font you ve already loaded then return to your German set When your report s all done you want to return the printer to its Roman 8 default Here are the commands that will do the job for us lt ESC gt 0G you start your report here ESC IU lt ESC gt 0G you finish your report here lt ESC gt 0 If you had finished with ESC 3 the printer would return to its standard Courier font not just its Roman 8 symbol set 68 Spacing If you specify monospaced for a font each c
129. setup parameters on the control panel it means you start off with particular font attributes as defaults 2 5 THE STAR LASERPRINTER 41 SUPERSET Here s an important fact you can set nearly every one of the above parameters by sending your printer a corresponding Escape sequence com mand Those Escape sequence commands will override any setting you make from the control panel The main thing to realize about most printer commands though is that you probably don t need to use them Nearly all popular software packages include printer drivers which send commands to the printer so you don t have to type them yourself Some of those programs ask you to key in set up parameters about your printer Other programs let you put printer commands before or inside the document you want to print But maybe the software you use doesn t have printer drivers for any printer your Star LaserPrinter 4III emulates You still might not have to write printer commands yourself Several companies sell programs that look after laser printing commands for such software Ask your dealer about LaserControl Printworks for Lasers PCLPakand RAM Resident Printmerge There s not much point in reinventing the wheel 26 CHAPTER Fonts The fonts you use determine what your pages will look like In this chapter we ll first clarify the meanings of words people use when they talk about fonts Next we ll examine the three kinds of fonts internal cartridge
130. sion mode Transfer raster graphics data Page 93 93 58 52 70 53 51 49 49 44 49 64 46 44 59 65 67 63 71 69 69 70 72 70 82 67 68 63 71 69 69 71 72 70 80 85 86 130 Command 5 b n Y ESC cn A ESC n B lt ESC gt c n D ESC c n E ESC lt ESC gt lt ESC gt c n H ESC c n P ESC cn V ESC pn X ESC Y lt ESC gt r B ESC rn A ESC rnF ESC 5 ESC rn T ESC t n R ESC v n N lt ESC gt v nO lt ESC gt v n T ESC 9 ESC lt ESC gt E ESC Y lt gt 7 lt ESC gt z Function Advanced vertical raster position Define horizontal rectangle size in dots Define vertical rectangle size in dots Specify font ID Specify character code Font control Specify pattern ID Define horizontal rectangle size in decipoints Fill with specified pattern Define vertical rectangle size in decipoints Position horizontal cursor in dots Position vertical cursor in dots End raster graphics Start raster graphics Set graphic image orientation Specifies pixel width of raster graphics Specifies pixel height of raster graphics Select raster graphics resolution Select transparent opaque mode for source images Select transparent opaque mode for patterns Select fill pattern Clear left and right margins Half line feed Reset the printer Enable display function Disable display
131. solid black rule To indicate the particular pattern you want send the following command The general meaning of the n value you enter actually depends on the com mand you put after this ESC c n G If you want a solid black rule it doesn t matter what you put in for n as the printer ignores it If you want a 1 dotted pattern for n you enter here a percentage number from to 100 indicating the density with which you want the box filled from light to solid Your percentage will correspond to one of the eight gray scale densities in the chart below 1 2 3 10 89 11 20 56 80 81 99 90 100 96 If you want a linear pattern for you enter here a pattern number between and 6 inclusive identifying one of the linear patterns below 1 2 3 4 N 4 N 5 6 90 You always send the following Print Pattern command after a Specify Pattern command This Print Pattern command identifies whether the area you have defined is to be filled with a rule dotted gray scale pattern or linear pattern ESC c n P For n enter a value from the following table If you select a linear pattern here but a dotted pattern in the previous Specify Pattern command the printer will ignore this Print Pattern command n Value Pattern 0 zero solid black 1 solid opaque white shaded fill as selected with lt ESC gt c n G cross hatched fill as selected with lt
132. sparent print command prints the string of data that follows it without paying attention to any embedded Escape sequences or control codes Transparent print even prints Carriage Return codes without zapping the print position back to the left margin 74 use Transparent print just put this command immediately in front of your print data lt ESC gt amp pn X For you specify the number of bytes of data you want to print Display Functions like the Transparent print command prints Escape sequences and control codes without actually executing them But Display Functions pays attention to Carriage Return codes so text looks more like the way it normally prints Display Functions also prints commands as blanks not as symbols Display Functions actually involves two Escape sequences one to turn it on and another to turn it off To turn on Display Functions send this command just before the data you want displayed ESC Y And to turn off Display Functions send this command at the end of the displayed print data lt ESC gt 7 That Escape Z sequence itself prints as a blank followed by a Z 4 5 8 Font control The Font Control command has two main functions defining a font s status and deleting fonts You can make a font either permanent or temporary with the Font Control command This helps you control which fonts you delete as permanent fonts do not get deleted when you reset the system The permanent or t
133. ssage which you can look up in your Star LaserPrinter 4IIl Operations Manual 43 4 2 2 Set number of copies Youcan print up to 99 copies of each of the pages you send to the printer You may send this command anywhere within the text on a page it will stay in effect for that and all subsequent pages until you send another such com mand ESC amp n X All you have to do is change the sign in this command to the number of pages you want The Zcharacter after the amp is a lowercase L 4 2 3 Set feed selection One thing you can do is print directly on envelopes as well as regular paper You use this Feed Select command to tell your printer to select either a page or envelope from the multi purpose tray or from the cassette option lt ESC gt amp n H For n enter one of the numbers from this table n FEED SELECTED 0 zero the printer only ejects the current page 1 the printer takes its next page from the multi purpose tray 2 the printer takes a regular page manually 3 the printer accepts an envelope you feed in manually 4 the printer takes its next page from the paper cassette Should an unprinted page be in the printer s memory when you give this command the paper for that page will feed from where you ve indicated Therefore you can make this the last command on a page The new feed setting stays in operation until you change it 4 2 4 Reset Most software packages automatically reset t
134. stored on ROM chips The difference is that those ROMs are in removable cartridges Your Star LaserPrinter has a slot for one font cartridge A cartridge may hold anywhere from half a dozen to two dozen fonts all differing from the internal fonts in size style stroke weight or symbol set You ll find that cartridge fonts open up a wider range of typefaces too such as Roman Prestige H Gothic and L Gothic Generally cartridge and internal font typefaces are suitable for both text and headlines The third kind of font is neither built into your Star LaserPrinter nor available just by slipping in a cartridge You download this kind of font which means you use a computer program to send characters from computer disk to your printer s memory Any downloaded font sometimes called a soft or installed font that you put into the printers RAM disappears when you turn off the printer so you have to download that font again next time you want it 31 Downloadable fonts run the gamut from Egyptian hieroglyphics to those eye catching decorative fonts known as display fonts They also include the more exotic foreign language characters such as Arabic or Cyrillic and symbol and mathematical fonts sometimes with fractions How can you compare cartridge and downloadable fonts When you use cartridge fonts you don t have to take time to download them They don t take any of your Star LaserPrinter 4II s RAM memory either But
135. switch or dual in line package switch is a set of small switches that control various printer functions The printer stores these parameters as easy to use program menu items that you can select from the control panel These parameters specify number of copies how many sheets of each page to be printed character what character font to print page size what size the printer will use layout how pages will be formatted paper feed what paper the printer will use input buffer what size the printer can store the input buffer interface how the printer communicates with your computer A default is the setting the Star LaserPrinter 4 will use if none 15 specifically selected by a program When you first turn on or later reset your printer these default settings will take effect Your main use for the control panel will likely be to set the default settings you want for these parameters However you will probably find the panel convenient too when you want to switch between manual and automatic paper feed 2 1 3 Four versions of parameters The Star LaserPrinter actually stores four versions of these parameters its ultimate default factory settings the user default settings in effect when you first turn on the printer your initial settings for one particular session and the current settings that the printer is using now These are in priority order The current settings always override the initial sess
136. t amp n lt ESC gt amp n P lt ESC gt amp n X ESC amp pn X ESC amp s n C lt gt lt 5 gt lt 5 gt lt ESC gt sn B ESC sn H ESC sn P ESC sn 5 ESC sn T lt ESC gt s n V lt ESC gt s n W ESC n lt 5 gt lt ESC gt n X ESC snB ESC snH lt ESC gt snP lt ESC gt snS lt ESC gt sn T lt ESC gt s n V lt ESC gt s n W lt ESC gt bn M lt ESC gt b n W Function Macro control Specify macro ID Set line termination Horizontal Motion Index Select font pitch Vertical Motion Index Set line spacing Set top margin Set text length Set feed selection Perforation skip Set page orientation Select page length Set number of copies Transparent print data End of line wrap Select primary font symbol set Select default primary font Designate downloaded font as primary Select primary font stroke weight Select primary font pitch Select primary font spacing Select primary font style Select primary font typeface Select primary font height Download character descriptor data Select secondary font symbol set Select default secondary font Designate downloaded font as secondary Select secondary font stroke weight Select secondary font pitch Select secondary font spacing Select secondary font style Select secondary font typeface Select secondary font height Download font descriptor Select downloading compres
137. ter 2 3 CONTROLLING THE PAGE In this section we look at two controls you have over how the Star LaserPrinter 4 handles and formats its pages You can set values for the PAPER FEED and LAYOUT parameters on the control panel At the end of this section we ll also preview different ways to move the print position 2 3 1 The PAPER FEED parameter The PAPER FEED parameter lets you specify both what kind of paper you want and how the paper is fed One convenient thing about a laser printer is that it doesn t need continuous forms sometimes called fanfold paper Other printers feed in a stack of forms with pages all joined by perforations by having sprockets engage and pull along pinfeed holes punched along each side of the paper After it s printed you have to tear off the pinfeed hole strips and then separate the pages With the Star LaserPrinter you can print on a variety of ordinary cut sheet pages For the Feeder value of this PAPER FEED parameter you first enter either multi purpose tray manual feed or cassette option to indicate where you want paper fed from The multi purpose tray handles various types and sizes of paper Letter Legal A4 B5 Executive OHP sheets Labels Envelopes Manual feed means you feed each sheet by hand from the multi purpose tray The cassette tray automatically feeds single sheets much like sheet feeders on other types of printers The default paper size is A4
138. ter 13 16 parity bit 17 pattern graphics 87 92 pen control commands 107 109 perforation region 49 pica characters 29 picas 28 picture frame 100 pitch 25 29 33 63 69 plot size 101 point size 2 25 28 polygon commands 110 112 popping print position 60 portrait orientation See font orientation primary fonts 61 print density 21 print drum 4 print engine 4 Print Pattern command 89 print position commands 24 51 61 print spoolers 39 printer control commands 43 46 printer drivers 6 9 26 printer parameters 13 16 PROGRAM button 16 proportional spacing 25 29 69 protocol 18 pushing print position 60 R RAM 3 32 39 40 random access memory See RAM raster graphics 84 87 read only memory See ROM READY light 13 reset command 44 resident fonts See internal fonts right margin command 48 ROM 3 roman style See style commands rules 88 90 S scalable fonts 2 31 scale command 104 105 secondary fonts 61 Self Test command 43 serial interface 3 16 18 side margin commands 48 spacing 25 29 63 69 See also line spacing commands monospacing proportional spacing Specify Macro ID command 93 95 Specify Pattern command 89 stop bit 18 stroke weight 26 27 33 71 167 style commands 26 29 33 63 70 subscripts 33 superscripts 33 symbol sets 25 33 34 65 68 134 164 tab commands 53 55 templates 35 TEST gt button 13 Text Leng
139. th command 49 toner cartridge 21 top margin command 48 transparencies 22 118 Transparent print command 74 75 typeface 26 27 63 typeface commands 72 U underlining 33 74 upright style See style commands user defined fonts 79 83 vector commands 106 109 vector graphics 97 127 vertical motion index See VMI vertical print position 55 56 vertical tab commands 55 56 VMI 24 W WYSIWYG 35 xX XON XOFF protocol 18 168 PRINTED IN JAPAN
140. the cursor position to advance vertically by n rows even if less than n rows are transferred The area maps to either opaque or transparent depending on the source transparency mode 86 The Raster Width command specifies the width in pixels of the next raster graphic ESC 5 The value of n must be non negative if necessary it is truncated to the value of logical page width x coordinate of cursor It will clip all raster rows longer than the specified width even if n 0 It will pad any row shorter than the specified width with zeros The area maps to either opaque or transparent depending on the source transparency mode The default value is the width or length of the logical page depending on the orientation The command is ignored when received between start and end raster graphics commands or if n is negative The Raster Y Offset command advances the vertical position and is ignored when not in the raster mode ESC b n Y If n is negative or if the new position would exceed the current raster height or the page limit it is ignored 4 8 PATTERN GRAPHICS The Star LaserPrinter 4 also prints pattern graphics which prints lines and patterned blocks Print shops call lines of any thickness rules A printed line in fact is a rec tangular area with one skinny dimension from one to many dots thick We will use the word rules too to avoid confusion with the lines used to measure pages You follow
141. tion to print the second line And when that s done you pop it again to return to printing text As you might suspect this can involve fairly complicated programming typically using the macro commands described later in this chapter To push or pop print position you send this command lt ESC gt amp fn 5 For you enter 0 to push save the current print position to pop restore the last position saved off the list 60 Note The last position pushed onto the list will always be the first one popped back later 4 5 CONTROLLING FONTS 4 5 1 Font selection The Star LaserPrinter 4 lets you define and select fonts three ways as primary and secondary fonts or by font identification number or by description We ll look at the first two ways now and explain selecting a font by its attributes a little further on However you choose to refer to fonts remember that a font must be available before you select it So if you want to select a cartridge or downloaded font you first have to put in the cartridge or download the font 4 5 2 Selecting primary or secondary fonts Of the three selection methods you will save the most programming time by shifting back and forth between primary and secondary fonts That s coun terbalanced though by the fact that you often need more than two fonts Typically you use primary and secondary fonts to flip back and forth between two different symbol sets for example IBM sy
142. to memory with Font Control function 6 If you want that copy to stay in RAM when you reset the printer you conclude by sending Font Control function 5 4 5 9 Example Controlling fonts Let s see how those last few commands work translated into BASIC Pretend you want to make a short test with your current font it doesn t matter what it is you want to print what s in ASCII table positions 128 through 130 There s nothing there in your normal Roman 8 symbol set but some other sets keep control codes or international characters there 76 Assuming you like what you see printed from those ASCII positions you then want to make that current font permanent Finally you also want to dump all the temporary fonts from printer memory to make room for some graphics you ll be printing Let s start with a reset and an underlined heading for your test print 100 LPRINT CHRS 27 E 110 LPRINT CHR 27 amp d0D 120 LPRINT Underlined heading for test print of ASCII 128 130 130 LPRINT CHR 27 amp dQ 140 LPRINT CHR 27 amp p3X 150 LPRINT CHR 128 CHR 129 CHR 130 160 LPRINT CHR 12 170 LPRINT CHRS 27 c5f1FE Line 100 15 just the lt 5 gt E reset command Lines 110 and 130 turn on and off the underline feature Line 140 turns on transparent printing which forces printing even for normally unprintable control codes The three bytes you want to print are in line 150 To see w
143. ts can be grouped into three categories internal cartridge and downloadable fonts 3 2 2 Internal fonts The Star LaserPrinter 4 has seven built in internal fonts that reside per manently in its read only memory That s why these are sometimes called resident fonts Courier 10 pitch 12 point medium Courier 10 pitch 12 point bold Courier 10 pitch 12 point italic Courier 12 pitch 10 point medium Courier 12 pitch 10 point bold Courier 12 pitch 10 point italic Line Printer 16 6 pitch 8 5 point medium Courier is the face used on the most common electric typewriters Courier is not printed with proportional spacing The Line Printer font designed originally for mainframe computers is small and designed to pack a lot of characters into every inch of print great for spreadsheets 30 The Star LaserPrinter AIII s scalable fonts have the same relative dimensions and general appearance as the following LaserJet III fonts CG Times regular CG Times bold CG Times italic CG Times bold italic Univers regular Univers bold Univers italic Univers bold italic With these most frequently used fonts in ROM a page can be assembled much faster than if the fonts had to be loaded into the printer for each printing job 3 2 3 Cartridge and downloaded fonts Your Star LaserPrinter 4 can use two other kinds of fonts along with those built into the printer Cartridge fonts like the internal ones are permanently
144. ts that use the same units If you send this command lt ESC gt p 40x 20Y the print position will move to a spot 40 dots from the left edge of the page and 20 dots down from the top edge 56 And if you send this one lt 5 gt 40h 20V the print position will move right 40 decipoints and up 20 decipoints 4 4 11 Backspace The Backspace control code works exactly as you might expect it moves the print position one column to the left lt BS gt Moving the print position back does not destroy any characters already sent In fact because of that this command can be quite useful It lets you superimpose one character over another Say you want to indicate a blank space as the letter b with a slash through it an old programming symbol Just send the b and then follow it with lt BS gt and the slash and you get this 4 4 12 Carriage return The Carriage Return command by itself only moves the print position back to the left margin of the line on which it currently sits lt CR gt If you want the print position to move down a line as well send a separate Line Feed command each time or use Define Automatic Line Ends ex plained below to couple these two control codes 4 4 13 Line feeds The Line Feed command advances the print position one line down the page The meaning of a line is set by the Line Depth command To send a line feed just send this control code lt LF gt 57 The
145. u want for your primary font send this command lt ESC gt sn T For enter one of the font code numbers from this table TYPEFACE n Line printer 0 zero Pica 1 one Elite 2 Courier 3 H Gothic 4 Roman 5 L Gothic 6 Script 7 Prestige 8 Caslon 9 Orator 10 Presentation 11 Line Draw 12 PC Line 13 OCR 14 Bar Code 15 To assign a character face to the secondary font just flip the parenthesis and use the same numbers lt ESC gt snT 72 Example Font attributes Let s put the last half dozen font attributes together in an example Say we want to select a nice font a small Line Printer for the footnotes in a report we ve finished Let s make it our secondary font since the body of our report is done in the primary font We ll go with the defaults for orientation and symbol set But let s be specific about the other attributes and let s remember to put them in priority order We decide on a monospaced of 16 66 characters per inch and a height of just seven points footnotes should look smaller than our regular text To keep it readable we opt for the ordinary upright style and medium weight in the Line Printertypeface Our sequence of individual commands would look like this ESC s 0P ESC s 16 66H lt ESC gt s 8 5V lt ESC gt s 0S lt ESC gt s lt ESC gt s OT Since these font attributes all start with the same s command category prefix let s put them all toget
146. ual holds two main sections The first one will help you with your programming job while the last provides the symbol set tables We ve summarized all commands in ASCII order here You ll find them organized by function in chapter 4 and 5 The Star LaserPrinter s symbol sets have been included so that you can see exactly what characters are available to you Roman 8 includes standard ASCII and is the default 6 1 COMMAND SUMMARY 6 1 1 Printer Control Language PCL commands Command Function Page BS Backspace 57 HT Horizontal tab 55 LF Line feed 57 FF Form feed 58 CR Carriage return 57 SO Select secondary font 62 SI Select primary font 62 ESC amp a n C Position horizontal cursor in columns 53 ESC amp an H Position horizontal cursor in decipoints 54 lt ESC gt L Set left margin 48 lt ESC gt amp an M Set right margin 48 lt ESC gt amp a n P Set print direction 65 lt ESC gt amp a n R Position vertical cursor in rows 55 lt ESC gt amp a n V Position vertical cursor in decipoints 56 lt ESC gt amp d Cancel underlining 74 lt ESC gt amp d n D Select underlining 74 lt ESC gt amp f n S Save and recall cursor position 60 129 Command lt ESC gt amp f n X ESC amp f n Y ESC amp k n G ESC amp k n H ESC amp k nS lt ESC gt lt ESC gt amp n D lt ESC gt amp n E ESC amp n F lt ESC gt amp n ESC L lt ESC g
147. ually vertical hence the name 22 Landscape Portrait When you use andscape orientation the words are printed their sides vertically up the length of the page Text written with landscape orientation only looks correct when you turn the page so its length runs side to side just like the painting of a landscape Envelopes must be printed with landscape orientation You also will use landscape regularly to print charts or banners and spreadsheets or reports with so many columns they wouldn t otherwise fit on the page All internal fonts and almost all cartridge and downloaded fonts are stored in the Star LaserPrinter with portrait orientation Margins columns and lines You can change margin settings for all four edges of a page The left and right side margins can have values from 0 to 132 defining the margin columns between which words and images can be printed And the top and bottom margins can be set at anywhere from 0 to 112 lines Top Margin 7 Side Margins Text Length Lc PA Column Portrait Bottom Margin Landscape Orientation Orientation 23 The meaning of a line sometimes called is defined by the vertical motion index VMI The printer moves the print position down a line when it gets a Line Feed code usually when it bumps into the right margin You ll probably let your computer program set the line depth B
148. ut from the panel you VMI value in increments from 1 48 to 255 48 of an inch Auto parameters The print position refers to the point on the page where the next character will be printed When the printer reaches the end of a line the Auto Parameters settings tell it whether or not to automatically move the print position down one line ine feed or keep text out of the side margin auto wrap 2 3 4 Moving the print position a preview With dot matrix printer you pick where to print on the page either by moving the printhead back and forth or by moving the paper itself Laser printers don t have printheads but the principle remains the same you have to say exactly where on the page each picture and string of text is to go so each page can be constructed in the printer s memory Instead of talking about printheads we talk about moving the print position some people call it moving the cursor using the computer screen anal ogy Horizontally you can move the print position with backspace and carriage return commands Vertically you can move the print position down the page by printing so many lines per inch or by sending line feed and half line feed commands You also move to tab settings both horizontally and vertically handy for tables and blank forms or making room for your diagrams But those aren t all You can tell the Star LaserPrinter 4 to move the print position vertically or horiz
149. which is the horizontal size of the GL 2 plot in inches lt ESC gt c nL in which is the vertical size of the GL 2 plot in inches These commands fit the GL 2 plot into the picture frame establishing scaling factors using the formula plot size picture frame size divided by 720 If n in either of these is zero the default values the size of the picture frame are used 101 5 3 CONFIGURATION AND STATUS The configuration and status group commands help you with the following Establishing default conditions and values for GL 2 features e Scaling images in the dimensional units you want to use Enlarging or reducing images for different media sized e Establishing a window soft clip limits e Drawing equal sized and mirror imaged drawings e Rotating the GL 2 coordinate system Default command DF This command returns the printer s GL 2 settings to the factory default settings Use the Default DF command to return the printer to a known state while maintaining the current locations of P1 and P2 unlike the IN com mand When using DF at the beginning of a program graphics parameters such as character size slant or scaling are not inherited from another program Initialize command IN This command resets the parameters to their default values It also sets the current position to the origin of the coordinate system the lower left corner of the picture frame Input and P2 com
150. with no parameters is the same as CR LE within a label 120 Absolute direction command DI x This command specifies the slope or direction at which characters are drawn independent of PI and P2 setting At least one parameter must be non zero otherwise the command is ignored Relative direction command DR run rise This command established the run and rise of the text path relative to the distance between points and P2 Define label terminator command DT abel terminator mode This command specifies the character to be used as the label terminator and whether it is printed The character defined with the label terminator parameter not null lt LF gt lt ESC gt or lt gt is used as the terminator of strings in subsequent LB commands The mode parameter indicates what to do with abel terminator besides using it as a terminator When the mode is the label terminator prints if it is a printable character and performs its function if it is a control code When the mode is the label terminator does not print if it is a printing character and does not perform its function if it is a control code Define variable text path command DV path line This command specifies the text path for subsequent labels and the direction of Line Feeds as either right left up or down The path parameter specifies the location of each character with respect to the preceding character
151. x1200Y 140 LPRINT CHR 27 c180h7200V 150 LPRINT CHRS 27 c25G 160 LPRINT CHRS 27 c2P 170 LPRINT 12 180 LPRI CHRS 27 amp 1X 190 LPRINT CHRS 27 amp f2X 200 END 1 Line 100 clears any existing macros then line 110 specifies that this will be macro ID number Line 120 starts downloading the macro Line 130 moves the print position to a spot 450 dots right and 1200 dots down from the top left corner of the page Lines 140 through 160 select the 1 80 dot deep and 7200 dot wide pattern and print it Line 170 does the form feed that forces the actual printing Line 180 ends the downloading process At the two line we select our macro and actually run it 95 96 CHAPTER Vector The Star LaserPrinter 4 provides the ability to print vector graphics using the GL 2 graphics language Printing with GL 2 requires leaving the PCL mode and entering the GL 2 mode Switching between modes involves only a few commands and software applications may easily switch between the two modes as needed without affecting performance 5 1 GL 2 COMMANDS AND SYNTAX The GL 2 commands have four components a mnemonic parameter s separator s and a terminator e Mnemonic The two letter mnemonic is designed to remind you of the command s function The mnemonic cab be uppercase or lowercase e Parameter s Some commands have no parameters for those c
152. y an SB command and override any previous setting 123 Standard font definition command SD kind value kind value This command defines but does not select the standard font by specifying its attributes The meaning of kind parameter is as follows Kind Attribute Default 1 Symbol set 21 ASCII 2 Spacing 0 monospaced 3 Pitch 9 4 Height 11 5 point 5 Style 0 upright 6 Weight 0 medium 7 Typeface 48 stick The value parameter defines the characteristics of the characteristic specified by the kind parameter Absolute character size command SI width height This command specifies the size of labeling characters in centimeters The default width and height depend on the pitch and size selected with the AD or SD command Once this command is given the width and height of characters do not change when P2 move Without parameters this command selects the size implied by AD or SD Width specifies the width of characters negative values imply mirror images about a vertical line Height specifies the height of capital negative values imply mirror images about a horizontal line When using stick fonts a change of character size will affect the thickness of the line used to draw the characters When appropriate the parameters are muhtiplied by the ratio size of picture frame plot size 124 When command 581 is in effect command SI cannot use negative param eters a
153. zontally to the right and the y axis vertically upwards Two types of units are available plotter units default and user units A plotter unit is 0 025 mm 0 00098 inch 0 294 pixels at 300 dpi User units can be set as required different for the x and y axes using the SC command 5 2 CONTROLLING THE PRINTER When importing an existing GL 2 file or creating an GL 2 image within an application you use several Escape sequences to set up the picture frame size choose the picture frame location and enter and exit GL 2 mode 5 2 1 Enter Exit GL 2 mode The following escape sequence is used to enter the GL 2 mode ESC n B If is O or an even number the cursor is set to its previous position when using GL 2 If nis odd number the cursor stays in its current position When is 0 and the printer is entering GL 2 for the first time the default cursor position is P1 the lower left corner This command sets the cursor and causes subsequent GL 2 commands to be interpreted as commands not text to the printed The printer remains in the GL 2 mode until an exit or reset command see below is received or until the printer is switched off To exit the GL 2 mode use the following escape sequence ESC n A If n is 0 an even number the cursor is reset to its position before entering GL 2 if n is 1 or odd the cursor remains at its current position After this command subsequent GL 2 commands are treated

Star Micronics 4111 Printer User Manual

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