Compaq 5525B/31/32 manual Hp Pcl-Ii, Introduction

2 HP PCL-II

Introduction

This chapter describes the HP® PCL-II emulation host control codes that are supported for your 5525B/31/32 Series printer. Emulation refers to the ability of a printer to execute the commands of a particular printer control language. A printer control language is the coding system used to convey, manipulate, and print data. It contains character codes and command sequences that configure the emulation. In this manual, the terms emulation, printer protocol, and printer control language are synonymous.

In the HP PCL-II emulation mode, your printer can print files coded for the HP PCL-II printer control language. To select the PCL-II emulation mode as the active printer emulation, select PCL-II in the ACTIVE EMULATION menu and then the PCL-II menu will appear under the EMULATION menu, as described in the Compaq 5525B/31/32 Line Matrix Printer User’s Manual.

The PCL-II emulation provides many configurable parameters. The default parameter values for this emulation are shown in Table 1. You can modify the emulation parameter values in two ways:

•The PCL-II host control codes. An extensive set of PCL-II control code commands can be sent to the printer from an attached host computer via the host data stream. Most of this chapter is devoted to describing the PCL-II control code commands.

•The printer configuration menus. You can modify a subset of the PCL-II emulation parameters using the printer configuration menus and control panel keys as described in the Compaq 5525B/31/32 Line Matrix Printer User’s Manual.

A parameter value set by a host control code overrides a value set from the printer’s control panel.

NOTE: Configuration values selected from the menus or via host control codes can be saved to memory so that they will not be lost when you power off the printer. The menu selection for saving a configuration to memory is described in the Compaq 5525B/31/32 Line Matrix Printer User’s Manual.

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