Rice Lake SURVIVOR SST3 Washdown Printer - Manual (Page 28)

Communications 25
4.5.1 Serial Strings
To develop the correct serial string, you first need to understand the Datamax ® Programming Language (DPL)
serial string. For every piece of information printed, the print format record must consist of the following three
pieces of information:
• A header that is fifteen characters long. The header specifies which font is used and where the data is
printed.
• Data to print.
• Termination character (such as a carriage return).
Header
A typical DPL serial string header consists of the following pieces of information:
Data String, Carriage Return and Execute Command
After the header, a data string and a carriage return are needed for each item to be printed.
Table 4-2. Data String, Carriage Return and Execute Command
Data Definition Description
STX Start of text Must have start of text at beginning of character stream
L Label Designation of label
1–4 Character rotation Rotation of characters
_ Font Font choice
_ Horizontal rotation Horizontal (width) muliplier
_ Vertical rotation Vertical (height) multiplier
000 Bar code Dependant on type of bar code selected
• If printing graphics, lines, boxes, and human-readable fonts 0 through 8,
these three characters are ignored, but they still must be sent to the printer as
000.
• For human-readable font 9, these three characters must be a number from
001 to 010 to select a font size for the CG triumvirate smooth font. Other
selections are available if downloading from RAM, flash memory modules,
ROM font modules.
• For bar code fonts, these three characters represent a bar code height
number. Numbers ranging from 001 (or 0.01 inch) to 999 (or 9.99 inches).
1250 Row address Four characters are the vertical offset in hundredths of an inch
0200 Column Four characters are the horizontal offset in hundredths of an inch
Table 4-1. Serial String Header
Data Definition Description
TEXT Printed information (data
string) Data to be printed (limited by range of printhead). Data string is terminated by a
carriage return
CR Carriage return Carriage return terminates data string
E Execute At end of label data information, execute signals the end of the label to the printer