[comp.sys.amiga.misc] HP Laserjet III from a Amiga. How to control.

hjanssen@cbnewse.att.com (hank janssen) (06/20/91)

I have asked this question before, but our posting of news got  hoosed
so i am asking it again......

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I have a Laserjet III, and i wanted to write a  programm  that  prints
stuff  to  it from intuition. (Yes i know that they are out there, but
none of it does what i want it to do)

I  want  to  controll the printer by bypassing the printer.device from
amiga and directly go to PRT:

I have opened PRT with both Open and fopen. Sent some escape sequences
just like the manual says is takes. And see it do _nothing_

Example a string like this. (THis is only an example)

<ESC>[5j

Will result on the prinout as:

5j

It eats up my ESCAPE character and my [  character.  while  it  should
interped as something changing from landscap  to  portait.  changing
point size etc etc.

Whatever escape sequence i sent the prnter it just prints it out minus
the escape character. I have tried by sending the real escape Sequence character its octal and
decimal value, but to no avail.

Is there something i am doing basicly wrong. 

The ROM manual staes that when you open PRT: directly all is sent to the printer RAW.

Does anybody have any idea that they like to share.????

Thanx,

Hank Janssen,

att!ihlpb!hjanssen

tomb@hplsla.HP.COM (Tom Bruhns) (06/25/91)

 hjanssen@cbnewse.att.com (hank janssen) writes:
 
> I have a Laserjet III, and i wanted to write a  programm  that  prints
> I  want  to  controll the printer by bypassing the printer.device from
> amiga and directly go to PRT:
> Example a string like this. (THis is only an example):  <ESC>[5j
> Will result on the prinout as:  5j
> It eats up my ESCAPE character and my [  character.  while  it  should
> interped as something changing from landscap  to  portait.  changing
> point size etc etc.
> 
> Whatever escape sequence i sent the prnter it just prints it out minus
> the escape character. I have tried by sending the real escape Sequence character its octal and
> decimal value, but to no avail.

(Tried to email and it bounced...)   I think you are not sending what the
printer wants!  Look carefully at the manual.  I suspect an <ESC> is
given as a _control_ [  ...  That is, I suspect that you should be
sending <esc>5j or something like that, though if that's the last
(only) command of the string, I think the last char should be J not j.
I looked in my LaserJetIIP manual, and found no commands that began
with esc[, and in particular, that wasn't the command to change the
orientation.  It sounds a lot like the printer is getting the characters
you are sending, but those aren't the characters that do what you think.
I've been able to simply edit a file with QED, putting in the escape
codes, etc., and copy that to PAR:, and everything comes out fine.
That is, I can use that mechanism to select fonts, etc.

Also, notice that I sent it to PAR: (could have been SER:), NOT to PRT:,
which I think always filters things.