HP 5961-0509 manual Units of the PCL Coordinate System, PCL Units, Decipoints, Columns & Rows

Units of the PCL Coordinate System

The units of the X-axis of the PCL coordinate system may be PCL Units, decipoints, or columns. The units of the Y-axis may be PCL Units, decipoints, or rows.

	PCL Units
	These are user-definable units of measure which are used in PCL
	commands affecting various PCL cursor moves. The number of
	units-per-inch used in PCL cursor moves is determined by the current
	setting of the Unit of Measure command (see “Unit of Measure
	Command” in Chapter 4).
Note	PCL Units were formerly referred to as “PCL Dots”. They were
	renamed “PCL Units” to prevent confusion with the printer’s physically
	printed “dots”, which are determined by the printer’s resolution.

Decipoints

In PCL terminology, a decipoint is 1/720 inch or one-tenth of a

PCL point (a PCL point is 1/72 inch as opposed to a typographic point which is 1/72 inch).

Columns & Rows

The width of a column is defined by the current horizontal motion index (HMI). The distance between rows is defined by the current vertical motion index (VMI), or lines-per-inch (lpi). HMI, VMI and lpi are described in Chapter 5, Page Control Commands.

Printer Internal Units

Internally, the printer uses a different unit of measure. It maps PCL Units, decipoints, and columns and rows to this unit of measure. This internal unit is 1/7200 inch. All positioning is kept in internal units and rounded to physical dot positions when data is printed.

EN Units of the PCL Coordinate System 2-5