GCC Printers 21 Series manual Appendix E PCL

Appendix E - PCL

PCL stands for Printer Control Language, a page description language developed by Hewlett-Packard for use with their LaserJet series printers. The Elite 21 printer supports PCL 6 (PCL 5e and PCL XL) , as well as PostScript. This is useful if sending jobs from older DOS-based applications that do not support PostScript. Selecting a HP LaserJet series driver from the list of printers in the DOS application will allow most jobs to be printed to the Elite 21. There are no specific settings that need to be set on the printer to allow PCL to be used; the printer will automatically sense PCL jobs and switch to PCL mode accordingly.

GCC has also included a PCL 5e Windows driver with the Elite 21 series software, which will allow all of the printer’s specific features to be accessed using PCL from Windows (using a HP LaserJet driver may not offer all paper handling options available on the Elite 21). Most users will use the standard Elite 21 PostScript drivers through Windows, but these PCL drivers are provided in the event that PCL emulation is necessary for your specific application(s) or system configuration.

To install the Elite 21 Series PCL 5e driver, select “Elite 21 Series PCL” when asked to select a printer model during the Windows driver installation.

Please note: PCL 5e is not the most recent version. PCL 6 (the most recent HP release) is supported by the Elite 21, however PCL 6 drivers are only available through Hewlett-Packard at this time.

A list of common PCL escape codes, used by some DOS applications to specify printing parameters, is found on the next page.

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