International Character Sets And Code Pages - Ithaca 150 Programmer's Manual

Control Codes
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.
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
ASCII
Hexadecimal
Decimal
IPCL
EPOS
Description
7
Epson provides limited code page support through ID to code page translation. Only six translations are
defined.
Page 24
PcOS Series 150
7
Select international character set
[ESC] ! <n>
1BH 21H
<27> <33>
&%CS <n>
[ESC] R <n>
This command selects the international character set, <n>. In standard mode,
the value of <n> is as follows:
Rev G
Programmer's Guide
12/14/99