Star Micronics NB24-10/15 User Manual page 56

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47
B The escape codes
Back when the ASCII system was set up, computer
equip-
ment was relatively simple and thirty-three
control codes were
considered sufficient at the time. The American Standards peo-
ple realized that eventually
more control codes would be need-
ed, so they included the escape (ESC) code to allow almost any
number
of additional
codes to be defined when they became
necessary.
ESC allows us to "escape" from the ordinary set of control
codes so we can specify additional functions and other informa-
tion needed for a printer function. In this manual, we'll write the
ESC code inside broken brackets,
like this - (ESC).
(ESC)
- decimal 27 - is always followed by at least one
other number; it is never used alone. The whole series of related
numbers is called an escape sequence.
n A note on command syntax
Because the readers of this manual will be running
such a
wide variety of applications on so many different computers,
we
can't show the exact way of sending codes to the printer for
each one of them. Instead, as we introduce you to each new com-
mand, we will show the commands
as in this example:
(ESC) "W" 1
This command
turns on expanded
printing.
(ESC),
as we
mentioned
earlier, is the escape code (which is ASCII code 27).
A letter or number in quotes (such as the "W" above) means that
the character
should be sent to the printer,
but without
the
quotes. In our example, you should send a capital W following
the escape code. In BASIC, you could do this in a couple of
ways: by sending the character itself (e.g. LPRINT "W";), or by
using the CHR$ function
to send the ASCII code for the
character (e.g. LPRINT
CHR$(87);).
Many of printer commands end with a 1 or 0. When shown as
in the above example (i.e., no quotes and no "CHR$"), you can
use either ASCII code 1 (i.e., CHR$(l)) or the character
"1"
(which is ASCII code 49). The same principle applies to com-
mands ending with 0.

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