Datamax-O'Neil Workstation series Programmer’s Guide - Manual (Page 12)

1 | Programmer’s Guide
Thermal Printer Programmer’s Guide 6
for the next character to be rendered. With raster images, the CAP is moved vertically to
the next dot row below the raster image previously rendered and then returned to the
horizontal start position of the raster image. The terminus CAP of the barcode is
selectable with the commands described below.
Set the Current Active Position (CAP) to the right of the last printed text character at a
distance equal to the width of that character so the next character can be rendered. With
raster images, the CAP is moved vertically to the next dot row below the previously
rendered raster image and returned to the horizontal start position of the raster image.
The terminus CAP of the barcode is selectable with the commands described below.
Orientation and the Influence on Label Dimensions
HP PCL defines the portrait orientation to be the page configuration where the X
dimension moves to the left along the short edge of the paper and the Y dimension
moves downward along the long edge of the paper. This seems perfectly reasonable
until both the label stock and the arbitrary dimensions a label may have on a given roll of
media are considered. As an example, for the common label stock size of 4” by 6”, it is
obvious the label is in the portrait orientation. For 4” by 3” label stock, HP PCL regards
this label as being in the landscape orientation and will automatically rotate the text,
images, rules, and coordinates by 90 degrees to maintain the portrait orientation with
respect to the shorter distance on the side. This may not be what an experienced user of
thermal printers would expect to see. In order for the same image to be produced on a
shorter label, the printer must be programed to produce the image in the landscape
orientation. Orientation takes precedence over label dimensions. If the printer is in the
portrait orientation, HP PCL will rotate the image to align it to the short edge of the label.
This subtle design characteristic may cause problems with users of legacy label printers
therefore we have chosen to modify this behavior to be more in-line with thermal printers.
Fonts and Symbol Sets Supported
Resident Scalable Fonts
The table below provides a list of the 53 resident scalable fonts and the escape
sequence needed to select that font as the current primary font. The tag
represents the escape character 0x1B. The tag represents the symbol set to
use with the selected font (see section 13 below). The tag represents the
requested point size of the font, up to two decimal places. The tag represents
horizontal spacing of a fixed pitch font in characters per inch.
Refer to the Symbol Set Mapping Table resident symbol sets. The tags must be replaced
with their appropriate values. Developers may choose to define their own symbol sets.
Note: The resident fonts for your printer may vary in number from those listed in this
table.