Epson Printer Codes

Epson Escape Codes (ESC/P-83)

Compatible with Epson LQ and FX series Dot Matrix printers.

See the examples at the end of the table

© Copyright 1995-1998 All rights reserved

07/13/1998

ASCII DEC HEX

BEL 7 7

BS 8 8

HT 9 9

LF 10 0A

VT 11 0B

FF 12 0C

CR 13 0D

SO 14 0E

SI 15 0F

DC1 17 11

DC2 18 12

DC3 19 13

DC4 20 14

CAN 24 18

DEL 127 7F

ESC SO 14 0E

ESC SI 15 0F

ESC EM 25 19

ESC SP 32 20

ESC ! 33 21

ESC # 35 23

ESC $ 36 24

ESC % 37 25

ESC & 38 26

ESC (- 40 28

ESC * 42 2A

ESC + 43 2B

ESC - 45 2D

ESC / 47 2F

ESC 0 48 30

ESC 2 50 32

ESC 3 51 33

ESC 4 52 34

ESC 5 53 35

ESC 6 54 36

ESC 7 55 37

ESC : 58 3A

ESC < 60 3C

ESC = 61 3D

NOTE!! The ESC character is DEC 027 or HEX 1B. Use the above table to determine which character code (Dec or Hex) that should be sent after the ESC character.

ASCII…..ESC….E

Decimal…027…..069

Hex……..1B……45

EXAMPLE. To set the "emphasized" mode in the printer, either of the following character strings may be sent.

Description ASCII DEC HEX

Beeper ESC > 62 3E

Backspace ESC ? 63 3F

ESC @ 64 40

Line feed ESC A 65 41

Tab vertically ESC B 66 42

Form feed ESC C 67 43

Carriage return ESC C0 67 67

ESC D 68 44

ESC E 69 45

Select printer ESC F 70 46

Description

Set MSB to 1

Reassign graphics mode

Tab horizontally

Initialize printer

Set n/72-inch line spacing

Set vertical tabs

Set page length in lines

Set page length in inches

Select double-wide (1 line)

Set horizontal tabs

Select condensed mode

Select emphasized mode

Cancel emphasized mode

ESC G 71 47

ESC H 72 48

ESC J 74 4A

Cancel line ESC K 75 4B

ESC L 76 4C

ESC M 77 4D

ESC N 78 4E

ESC O 79 4F

ESC P 80 50

Master select ESC Q 81 51

ESC R 82 52

ESC S0 83 53

Cancel condensed mode

Select double-strike mode

Deselect printer

Cancel double-strike mode

Cancel double-wide (1 line)

Perform n/216-inch line feed

Select single-density graphics

Delete character

Select double-density graphics

Select double-wide (1 line)

Select 12 cpi

Select condensed mode

Set skip over perforation

Cut sheet feeder on/off

Cancel skip over perforation

Set inter character space

Select 10 cpi

Set right margin

Cancel MSB control

International character set

Set absolute print position

Select superscript mode

ESC S1 83 53

ESC T 84 54

Select Score ESC U 85 55

ESC W 87 57

ESC Y 89 59

ESC Z 90 5A

ESC \ 92 5C

ESC a 97 61

ESC b 98 62

ESC g 103 67

ESC k 107 6B

Select user-defined set

Select subscript mode

Define user-defined characters

Cancel superscript/subscript

Turn unidirectional mode on/off

Select graphics mode

Turn double-wide on/off

Set n/360-inch Line Spacing

High-speed dbl-density graphics

Turn underlining on/off

Quadruple-density graphics

Select vertical tab channel

Retrieve relative position

Select 1/8-inch line spacing

Select justification

Select 1/6-inch line spacing

Set vertical tabs in channels

Select n/216-inch line spacing

Select 15 CPI

Select italic mode

Select typestyle family

ESC l 108 6C

ESC p 112 70

ESC q 113 71

ESC t 116 74

ESC w 119 77

Set MSB to 0 ESC x 120 78

Cancel italic mode

Set left margin

Enable printable characters

Turn proportional mode on/off

Enable upper control codes

Select character style

Copy ROM into RAM

Select character table

Unidirectional mode (1 line)

Turn double-high on/off

Select NLQ or draft

Advanced report design

Print output and design for dot matrix and pos devices

Page setup

Page size is very important to configure, else you will obtain longer lines and longer pages and not the correct output.

You can define margins to 0, because the page size will define the practical print out of the printer, that is the printable area.

For a page width of 80 columns at 10cpi the page width is calculated:

For a page height of 66 lines:

Select user defined paper size and enter the correct values.

Activate text out

If you have problems or want to enable better quality escape codes (bold,italic, 12cpi, 20cpi) you can select another driver by clicking at printer setup button. You can select a printer in the list and the driver it will use. If you don't select a driver, standard output will be used.

Microsoft Windows additonal features

With this method, the engine will select the best affordable font for the texts, but the graphic elements and images will be printed also (usually the graphic elements print slow on impact printers).

Note this print method does not output lines, but calls Windows API for any graphic and text operation, and for page size selection, the source of any problem (page displacement, garbage output) is usually the print driver.

How it works and design recommendations

The graphic elements (drawings and images) are ignored, based on the page size, the number of lines of the report are determined at a rate of 1/6 lines for inch so for a 11 inch page size the page will be build with 66 text lines.

Page Width=80 characters with/ 10 characters per inches = 8 inchess = 8*2.54 cms = 20.32 cms

Page Height=66 lines / 6 lines per inches = 11 inchess = 11*2.54 cms = 27.94 cms

For thermal receipt printers usually the font A is 12cpi and font B is 17 cpi, so set a page with of 42 /12cpi=3,3 inchess=8..6cms. The characters for font B are 3.3*17=56 at this size. The physical real page width can differ.

For impact receipt printers usually the font A is 10cpi and font B is 12 cpi, so set a page with of 33/10cpi=3,3 inchess=8..6cms. The characters for font B are 3.3*12=40 at this size. The physical real page width can differ.

For receipt printers you can establish a page length of 11 inchess=27.94 cms. If you don't use page headers-footers, or repeatable group headers, will be just like there was not page breaks, the ticket printer driver does not send form feeds.

To automatically activate a report to print as a text (without driver interaction or filtering) with escape code secuences you can go to page setup, select that the report will be output to the character printer (default EPSON driver) or select the output to ticket printer (default EPSONTMU210 driver).

You can also select a printer queue (system printer) so the output will be done to the selected printer.

At page setup you can force cash drawer open (the engine will send the escape command to the printer), before or after printing the report.

With Microsoft Windows and a good quality print driver installed you can still use the driver to provide fast printing with printer native fonts. You must select the blank text driver and check the Device fonts option.

The length in characters of each line is determined by the first text element placed in the line (or 10cpi is selected if no text in this line), the font step (you can specify a Font Step in the designer) of this text will determine the font size for that line (only one font size is allowed for each line but multiple font styles can be combined in one line). If the text element Font Step indicates By Size value, the engine will use the following table:

Font Size Step cpi<8 20

8 179 15

10 1211,12 1013-15 6>15 5

Set horizontal page size correctly or at least narrower than the real page size (printer capability), if you print a 132 column report in a 80 cols printer, the printer will skip two lines for each report line.

The final output will be a number of lines formatted with the selected driver (escape codes), or no formatting at all (PLAIN driver). Depending on the selected driver the last line of each page will finish with a Form Feed instead a Line Feed.

Internal implementation

When the final output is created in memory, the engine send it to the printer in this way:

Microsoft Windows

A new print document is created with the Windows API, to disable the driver, the document is queued as a RAW type document, so the text go to the printer throught the selected port in printer configuration without processing in the printer driver. If oem option is checked then the text is processed first with CharToOem API function.

Linux

The recode command line tool is called with this parameters:

recode ..850/ tempfile

The lpr command line tool is called with this parameters:

lpr -P printerqueue -r -l -J Title

The -P printerqueue parameters are omited if the default printer is used. The -r will force deletion of the temporary file after processing it, the -l indicates the lpr command to send the file directly to the device without using any print filter, and the -J gives a job title for the printer queue.

Drivers overview

Name

The text elements are placed vertically rounded to 1/6 inch, so the better way to design a report for text output is set grid height to 1/6 inch that is 0.1666 inch or 0.42333 cms. Also set the horz.grid size as the most common size of it, for example for a 10cpi report set horz. grid to 0.1 inch or 0.254 cms. Also resize the section heights to multiples of 1/6 inch, you can do it automatically by selection the option in Edit menu.

The lines are saved to a temporary file, and using unix like interprocess comunication (pipes) the engine calls lpr command line tool, if oem option is checked then the file is processed first by the recode command line tool.

Description, escape codes

PLAIN

EPSON

No escape codes are introduced , no form feed characters

Init printer, page size, 10cpi, wide escape (5cpi) and condensed escape (17cpi), form feed, underline style

EPSON-MASTER

Init printer, page size,form feed, 5-6-10-12-17-20cpi, underline-bold-italic, all with ESC ! command

EPSON-ESCP

Init printer, page size,form feed, 5-6-10-12-17-20cpi, underline-bold-italic, all with ESC/P compatible commands

EPSON-ESCPQ

Same as EPSON-ESCP but selecting the better quality (slower)

IBMPROPRINTER

Init printer, page size,form feed, 5-6-10-12-17-20cpi, underline-bold-italic, with IBM Proprinter escape commands

EPSONTMU210

Init printer, page size,form feed, 6-12-17cpi, underline-bold, all with ESC ! command, but is capable of printing red color text.

EPSONTMU210CUT

Same as EPSONTMU210 but perform a cut paper command at the end of the document

EPSONTM88II

Init printer, page size, 6-12-17cpi, underline-bold, all with ESC ! command

HP-PCL

VT-100

EPSONTM88IICUT

Same as EPSONTM88II but a cut paper command at the end of the document

Init printer, page size,form feed, 5-6-10-12-17-20cpi, underline-bold-italic, all with HP-PCL compatible commands

Try to emulate VT-100 escape codes

PLAINFULL

Same as plain but without blank spaces or blank lines

Page size is very important to configure, else you will obtain longer lines and longer pages and not the correct output.

You can define margins to 0, because the page size will define the practical print out of the printer, that is the printable area.


With this method, the engine will select the best affordable font for the texts, but the graphic elements and images will be printed also (usually the graphic elements print slow on impact printers).



usually the font A is 12cpi and font B is 17 cpi, so set a page with of 42 /12cpi=3,3 inchess=8..6cms. The characters for font B are 3.3*17=56 at this size. The physical real page width can differ.

usually the font A is 10cpi and font B is 12 cpi, so set a page with of 33/10cpi=3,3 inchess=8..6cms. The characters for font B are 3.3*12=40 at this size. The physical real page width can differ.

. If you don't use page headers-footers, or repeatable group headers, will be just like there was not page breaks, the ticket printer driver does not send form feeds.

To automatically activate a report to print as a text (without driver interaction or filtering) with escape code secuences you can go to page setup, select that the report will be output to the character printer (default EPSON driver) or select the output to ticket printer (default EPSONTMU210 driver).

(the engine will send the escape command to the printer), before or after printing the report.

With Microsoft Windows and a good quality print driver installed you can still use the driver to provide fast printing with printer native fonts. You must select the blank text driver and check the Device fonts option.


Set horizontal page size correctly or at least narrower than the real page size (printer capability), if you print a 132 column report in a 80 cols printer, the printer will skip two lines for each report line.




The text elements are placed vertically rounded to 1/6 inch, so the better way to design a report for text output is set grid height to 1/6 inch that is 0.1666 inch or 0.42333 cms. Also set the horz.grid size as the most common size of it, for example for a 10cpi report set horz. grid to 0.1 inch or 0.254 cms. Also resize the section heights to multiples of 1/6 inch, you can do it automatically by selection the option in Edit menu.

The lines are saved to a temporary file, and using unix like interprocess comunication (pipes) the engine calls lpr command line tool, if oem option is checked then the file is processed first by the recode command line tool.




The characters for font B are 3.3*17=56 at this size. The physical real page width can differ.

The characters for font B are 3.3*12=40 at this size. The physical real page width can differ.

. If you don't use page headers-footers, or repeatable group headers, will be just like there was not page breaks, the ticket printer driver does not send form feeds.

the character printer (default EPSON driver) or select the output to ticket printer (default EPSONTMU210 driver).





. Also set the horz.grid size as the most common size of it, for example for a 10cpi report set horz. grid to 0.1 inch or 0.254 cms. Also resize the section heights to multiples of 1/6 inch, you can do it automatically by selection the option in Edit menu.

command line tool.



resize the section heights to multiples of 1/6 inch, you can do it automatically by selection the option in Edit menu.


dim fso as new FileSystemObject

dim ts as TextSTream

set ts = fso.CreateTExtfile(<FileName.txt>)

ts.write " Invoice "

ts.write "Date:2323 BillNo.4"

ts.write "-----------------------------"

ts.close

''Print to Printer

''For XP

Shell "CMD /C TYPE " & FilePath & " > PRN", vbNormalFocus

''For 98/Me

Shell "COMMAND /C TYPE " & FilePath & " > PRN", vbNormalFocus

''For preview on screen

'Shell "CMD /C Edit /R " & FilePath, vbNormalFocus

Private Sub cmdPrint_Click()'This is the sample how to print in Dos Mode and How to print it Bold!'http://www.geocities.com/mdgnn/xcontrols.htm

Open "Lpt1" For Output As #1 Print #1, Chr(27) & "@" 'Initialize printer Print #1, Chr(27) & "A" & Chr(11) Print #1, Chr(27) & "E" 'Set Font Bold Print #1, "Printer is Bold" Print #1, "Printer is Bold" Print #1, Chr(27) & "F" ' Set Font Normal Print #1, "Printer is Normal" Print #1, "Printer is Normal"

Close #1End Sub

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Epson Printer Codes