Control Codes | PcOS Series 150 | Programmer's Guide |
Character Sets and Code Pages
International Character Sets and Code Pages
The Series 150 Printer supports 65 different international character sets. In IBM and EPOS printers, there has historically been two ways of selecting a character set. The first way substitutes international characters in the upper 128 characters of the standard character set to support different countries. As time passed, this approach became difficult to support. It became a problem for the application to match the characters displayed and the characters printed. To solve the problem, code pages were developed. The printer and the display could use the same code page and the application would then display and print the same characters. IBM and EPOS defined new commands to select code pages and left the old commands in effect.
The Series 150 Printer supports international character sets as well as code pages. However, both methods are extended in the Series 150 Printer. This is to allow the most flexibility for the application programmer. In IBM mode, there are 19 character sets and 60 code pages. In EPOS mode, there are 57 character sets and five code pages.7
The Series 150 Printer has extended the IBM code page selection command to allow the character sets as well as normal IBM code pages to be selected. The EPOS character set select command has been extended to allow additional character sets over and above the 11 defined by EPOS. The EPOS code page select command has not been extended as there is no EPOS definition beyond the first six ID’s.
All characters in code pages as well as character sets are addressed as 0 thorough 255. (Characters below 32 must be addressed with the [ESC] ^ <n> command.) Code pages may be changed at any time and are active for all features including rotated print.
As discussed above, there are two commands for language selection in IBM mode. The first is [ESC] ! which will select one of 19 international character sets. This command will not select all the possible sets and is provided for compatibility with older programs. The second is [ESC] [ T which will select any of the 58 code pages. In EPOS mode, the command [ESC] R has been expanded and will select any of the 59 international character sets or code pages.
Function | Select international character set |
ASCII | [ESC] ! <n> |
Hexadecimal | 1BH 21H |
Decimal | <27> <33> |
IPCL | &%CS <n> |
EPOS | [ESC] R <n> |
Description | This command selects the international character set, <n>. In standard mode, |
| the value of <n> is as follows: |
7Epson provides limited code page support through ID to code page translation. Only six translations are defined.
Page 24 | Rev G | 12/14/99 |
