HP 5961-0509 manual Cursor Positioning

6 Cursor Positioning

Introduction

This section describes the cursor positioning commands.

Although the printer does not actually have a cursor, the PCL cursor position refers to the Current Active Position (CAP), like the blinking underline character (cursor) used on most computers. This “cursor” identifies the current position on the page; the pointer, where a printing command begins laying out page data. The cursor can be moved anywhere within the logical page using a combination of horizontal and vertical cursor positioning commands and control codes.

In addition to cursor commands positioning the cursor, the cursor is automatically positioned after certain operations, such as printing characters and graphics. After printing a character, the cursor is positioned to the right, at a distance equal to the width of that character. This is controlled by the character design described under “Character Width” in Chapter 10, and allows printing characters without requiring a cursor position command for each character printed. When printing graphics, the cursor can also be positioned at a new location. These new positions are identified in the graphics sections.

HP-GL/2 vector graphics has its own HP-GL/2 cursor (referred to as the “pen”) that can be positioned within the HP-GL/2 addressable area. For additional information on HP-GL/2 pen positioning refer to Chapter 17, An Introduction to HP-GL/2 Vector Graphics.

EN Introduction 6-1