5525B/31/32 Line Matrix Printer PCL II Programmer's Reference Manual

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Chapter 2 Configuring the PCL-II Emulation with Control Codes
Another method using a text editor would be to do a CHANGE command
replacement to convert the characters to ASCII characters. This is shown as:
\ADD 1
1 ESC&142WabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJ
2 //
\CHANGEQ 7/7 TO ’00
\CHANGEQ 8/8 TO ’05
\CHANGEQ 9/9 TO ’00
.
.
.
\CHANGEQ 48/48 TO ’06
This could also be input by not entering the letters, but simply changing the
specific column to the desired ASCII character. In the above example the
“abc... HIJ” would not be entered and the CHANGE command would be used
as follows:
\CHANGEQ 7 TO '00 \CHANGEQ 8 TO '05
.
.
.
As you can see, the escape sequence for the Programmable VFC can be
quite complicated. This should only be used after attempting to satisfy VFC
requirements using the standard (computed) VFC and the TEXT and PAGE
LENGTH escape sequences.
The most common errors in successfully implementing the Programmable
VFC escape sequence usually involve improper VFC byte counting or
attempting to manipulate “unprintable” characters and getting confused.
Converting these “unprintable” characters to printable ones is the easiest way
to avoid data entry confusion.
Summary of Recommended Steps to Implement Programmable VFC
1. Layout the required VFC in a standard channel 1-16 format.
2. Reverse the resulting bit image so that channel 1 is now where channel
16 was and channel 16 is now where channel 1 was.
3. Divide this 16 bit image into two 8-bit bytes.
4. Decode these 8-bit bytes into ASCII characters using the chart in
Appendix A. If the corresponding decoded character is not a printable
character (below %37), it is highly suggested to convert to one by using a
“dummy” channel (7 and/or 15).
5. Enter these characters into the Programmable VFC escape sequence as
the VFC data. This data MUST be an even byte count and is CASE
SENSITIVE (upper/lower). As in all escape sequences, do not include the
brackets ([ ]); they are for clarification only.