Datamax-O'Neil PrintPAD AN-02 - Manual

AN-02
September 23, 2005
OVERVIEW OF THERMAL LINE PRINTER MODE
Line printer mode is the simplest protocol supported by the O’Neil thermal printers. Send a line of text as a sequence of
characters down to the printer followed by a carriage return (0x0D), and/or a line feed (0x0A), or a form feed (0x0C) and
the printer will print that line of text. Commands can be used to change the way the printout looks, and to select different
fonts (fonts are available as the common IBM PC Code Page 437 mapping as well as many other mappings and
international character sets – see AN-3 or AN-13)
Commands are usually either a single non-printable character, or a sequence of characters beginning with a non printable
character such as ESCape (0x1b). Although these commands can be placed anywhere in the text, they will usually take
effect exactly where they are placed. So you must be careful to place them where you want the effect to take place. For
example, to change fonts you send ESC w n, where ‘n’ is the single character name of the font (seen AN-3 or AN-12). If
you do this at the beginning of the line, it will affect the entire line. But if you place this in the center of a line, it will affect
only those characters that come after. If you place this at the end of the line, it will have no effect on that line at all, but
will affect the next line.
COMMAND MEANING
ORIGINAL
MF2/MF3/2t/4t
RADIO READY
2t/3l/4t
LF (0x0A)
1
Print any characters received and advance to the next line X X
FF (0x0C)
Print any characters received and advance to the next
page
X
Configurable
option – default
is OFF
CR (0x0D)
1
Print any characters received and advance to the next line X X
SO (0x0E) Sets double width printing X X
SI (0x0F) Cancels double width printing X X
CAN (0x18)
Cancels any characters sent to the printer on the current
line that have not yet been printed
X X
ESC @
(0x1B ‘@’)
Resets the printing engine - cancels any command
currently in effect and resets the font as if the printer had
just been turned ON
X X
ESC ! n
(0x1B ‘!’ n)
Sets double wide and double tall. The ‘n’ is a bit field
where double wide is set if Bit 5 is set, and double high is
set if Bit 4 is set
X X
ESC A n
(0x1B ‘A’ n)
Sets line spacing to add n dotlines between each text line.
Default is zero
X X
ESC B
(0x1B ‘B’)
Beginning of Run Length Encoded graphics image (see
ESC E and AN-5). This command is followed by the Run
Length encoded graphic image data
X X
ESC C n
(0x1B ‘C’ n)
Set form length to n lines, each line is the height of the
CURRENT font
X
X
(Note FF must
be ON to use)
ESC E
End of a Run Length Encoded graphics image (see ESC s
n and AN-5)
ESC EZ
(0x1B “EZ”)
Toggle to Easy Print mode X X