HP PCL 5 User manual

PCL 5 Comparison Guide
for the
HP LaserJet III
HP LaserJet IIID
HP LaserJet IIISi
HP LaserJet IIIP
HP LaserJet 4 Family
HP LaserJet 4000 series
HP Color LaserJet
HP Color LaserJet 5/5M
HP LaserJet 5 Family
HP LaserJet 6 Family
HP DeskJet 1200C
HP DeskJet 1600C
Printers
Edition 1
E1097
HP Part No. 5021-0378
Printed in U.S.A. 10/97

All Rights Reserved. This document contains proprietary
information which is protected by copyright. No part of this
document may be photocopied, reproduced, or translated to
another language without the prior written consent of
Hewlett-Packard Company.
Warranty The information contained in this document is subject to
change without notice.
Hewlett-Packard makes no warranty of any kind with
regard to this material, including, but not limited to, the
implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a
particular purpose.
Hewlett-Packard shall not be liable for errors contained
herein or for incidental consequential damages in
connection with the furnishing, performance, or use of this
material.
© Copyright 1997 Hewlett-Packard Company
ii

Printing
Information This manual was created using text formatting software on
a personal computer. The camera-ready copy was printed
direct to film and reproduced using standard offset printing.
Trademark Credits Intellifont is a U.S. registered trademark of Agfa Division,
Miles Incorporated. CG Times is a product of Agfa
Corporation, AGFA Compugraphic Division. LaserJet, PCL,
DeskJet, Vectra, and Resolution Enhancement are U.S.
registered trademarks of Hewlett-Packard Company. IBM
is a registered trademark of International Business
Machines Corporation. Wingdings, MS-Mincho, and
MS-Gothic are trademarks, and Microsoft, Windows, and
MS-DOS are U.S. registered trademarks of Microsoft
Corporation. Centronics is a U.S. registered trademark of
Centronics Corporation. ITC Zapf Dingbats is a U.S.
registered trademark of International Typeface Corpora-
tion. Helvetica and Times Roman are trademarks of
Linotype AG and its subsidiaries.
Univers is a U.S. registered trademark of Linotype AG and
its subsidiaries. PostScript and the PostScript logo are
registered trademarks of Adobe Systems, Inc. in the U.S.
and other countries. Arial, Times New Roman and
Monotype are U.S. registered trademarks of Monotype
Corporation plc. Macintosh is a registered trademark and
TrueType is a trademark of Apple Computer, Inc. ESC/P is
a trademark of Seiko-Epson Corporation.
iii

Conventions This manual uses the following conventions:
Bold indicates a term defined in the glossary.
Italic refers to a related document, or is used for
emphasis.
The cursive letter lis used in some examples to
distinguish the letter “l” from the numeral “1” (one).
A slash zero 0is used in some examples and escape
sequences to distinguish the letter “O” from the number
“0”.
0x XX represents a hexadecimal number (XX).
The ~character indicates that the current line of code is
a continuation of the previous line.
Note Notes contain important information set off from the text.
iv

Contents
1 Printer Features
PCL Feature Support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1-3
PCL 5 Technical Reference Manual Corrections . . . . . . . 1-5
PCL Feature Support Matrix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1-6
Printable Area . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1-26
2 Printer-Specific Differences
HP LaserJet III and IIID Printers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2-1
HP LaserJet IIISi Printer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2-2
HP LaserJet IIIP Printer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2-2
Raster Graphics Adaptive Compression (IIIP) . . . . . . . 2-4
HP LaserJet 4 Printer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2-4
Configuration Command (AppleTalk) . . . . . . . . . . . 2-7
HP LaserJet 4Si Printer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2-10
HP LaserJet 4L Printer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2-11
HP LaserJet 4ML Printer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2-12
Logical Operations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2-13
Logical Operations and Transparency Interactions . . . . 2-15
Logical Operation Command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2-17
Pixel Placement Command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2-25
Pixel Placement Command (HP-GL/2) . . . . . . . . . . . 2-28
Merge Control Command (HP-GL/2) . . . . . . . . . . . . 2-29
HP LaserJet 4P and 4MP Printers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2-31
HP LaserJet 4PJ Printer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2-32
Text Parsing Method Command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2-33
Character Text Path Direction Command . . . . . . . . . 2-34
Font Header Format 16 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2-35

New Font Format Header Segments . . . . . . . . . . . . 2-36
Description of Font Header Segments . . . . . . . . . . . 2-37
HP LaserJet 4PJ Programming Tips . . . . . . . . . . . . 2-49
Paper Size . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2-60
HP LaserJet 4 Plus and 4M Plus Printers . . . . . . . . . . 2-60
HP LaserJet 4V and 4MV Printers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2-62
Font Header Format 16 Bitmap Font Support . . . . . . . . 2-63
Font Header Format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2-63
Character Definition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2-68
Limitations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2-69
HP Color LaserJet Printer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2-70
AppleTalk Configuration Command . . . . . . . . . . . . 2-71
HP LaserJet 4LJ Pro Printer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2-72
HP LaserJet 4LC Printer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2-72
HP LaserJet 5P and 5MP Printers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2-73
HP LaserJet 5L Printer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2-74
HP LaserJet 5Si and 5SiMx Printers . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2-75
Paper (Media) Source Command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2-76
Output Bin Command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2-78
Alphanumeric ID Command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2-79
HP DeskJet 1200C Printer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2-85
Updated Features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2-86
Enter HP-GL/2 Mode Command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2-87
Media Type Command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2-88
Print Quality Command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2-89
Negative Motion Command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2-90
HP DeskJet 1600C Printer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2-91
HP LaserJet 5 and 5M Printers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2-97
Text Parsing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2-97
Two-Byte HP-GL/2 Support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2-98
Label Mode Command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2-98
Contents-2

Vertical Writing with Proportional Fonts . . . . . . . . . 2-101
HP Color LaserJet 5 and 5M Printers . . . . . . . . . . . . 2-103
HP LaserJet 6P/ 6MP Printers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2-105
HP LaserJet 5Si Mopier . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2-105
HP LaserJet 6L Printer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2-106
HP LaserJet 4000 series Printers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2-106
3 Internal Typefaces/Fonts and Symbol Sets
Bitmap Fonts and Symbol Sets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3-2
Scalable Typefaces and Symbol Sets . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3-3
Typeface Selection Differences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3-12
4 Print Environment
5 Memory Usage
Operation of ADC and MEt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5-2
Image Adapt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5-2
Additional MEt Features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5-3
ADC and MEt Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5-4
Recommendations For Sending Data to the Printer . . . . 5-4
Raster Graphics Adaptive Compression (Method 5) . . . . . 5-7
A Printer Commands
B Internal Symbol Set Charts
ISO Substitution Table . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . B-21
Conversion Table . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . B-22
C Symbol Set and Typeface Codes
D MSL/Unicode Symbol Indexes
Index
Contents-3

Contents-4

1
Printer Features
Introduction Hewlett-Packard printers which support the PCL 5 printer
language contain slightly different feature sets, each
suitable for that printer’s intended use. Each printer
implements minor variations of PCL 5 as a result of those
differences. With new printer releases, new features may be
added with new commands and/or PCL operations which
require documentation.
The purpose of this guide is to identify the differences in
the implementation of the PCL 5 Printer Language for
different HP LaserJet and DeskJet printers, as compared to
that described in the PCL 5 Printer Language Technical
Reference Manual. This guide describes new commands and
exceptions to existing commands unique to the printers, as
well as internal typeface/font support and print
environment settings.
Feature Set 1-1

This guide covers the following HP LaserJet printers:
Introduction Date
LaserJet III March 1990
LaserJet IIID September 1990
LaserJet IIISi February 1991
LaserJet IIIP May 1991
LaserJet 4, 4M October 1992
LaserJet 4Si, 4SiMx April 1993
LaserJet 4L, 4ML May 1993
LaserJet 4P, 4MP September 1993
LaserJet 4 Plus, 4M Plus May 1994
LaserJet 4PJ May 1994
LaserJet 4V, 4MV September 1994
DeskJet 1200C May 1993
DeskJet 1200/PS May 1993
Color LaserJet September 1994
LaserJet 4LC March 1995
DeskJet 1600C March 1995
LaserJet 4LJ Pro May 1995
LaserJet 5P, 5MP May 1995
LaserJet 5L September 1995
LaserJet 5Si, 5SiMx November 1995
Color LaserJet 5, 5M March 1996
LaserJet 5, 5M April 1996
LaserJet 5Si Mopier October 1996
LaserJet 6P, 6MP October 1996
LaserJet 6L September 1997
LaserJet 4000 series November 1997
This guide also covers the HP 1200C and 1600C DeskJet
printers.
1-2 Feature Set