Introduction - Xerox 850DP - Phaser Color Solid Ink Printer Manual

2 Introduction

Many of the data formats and page description languages supported by the AccXES architecture do not
have a mechanism to control many job processing attributes. Other languages have some job control,
but cannot control the more specialized features of the printer, such as finisher options. To access
advanced printer functionality, a separate mechanism is required. This is the responsibility of the Job
Control Language. Specifically, AccXES architecture supports HP-PJL, which is an industry standard
printer job control language originally developed by Hewlett-Packard. The specific implementation of
HP-PJL on the AccXES architecture is a superset of the core HP-PJL functionality. The HP-PJL
superset is tailored to the feature set required for the Xerox printing and plotting systems.
It is intended that this language be well documented and easily available for external third party
integrators to use in their development of host based print servers employing the AccXES controller in
the printer as well as client platform print drivers and utilities.
Another goal of the job control language implementation is to allow remote configuration and job
control/status. All operations that can be performed at the printer front panel interface should be
available through the job control language implementation. Of course, client host software is required
to produce the appropriate job control constructs.
HP-PJL is used to encapsulate the user jobs to provide job and printer control information. In this
respect, it can be viewed as functioning "above" the level of HPGL/2, TIFF, and other printer languages.
The following figure shows how HP-PJL may be combined with user print jobs. Notice that HP-PJL
can be used independently of user print jobs as well.
HP-PJL Job Control Language
User Job (HPGL/2, TIFF, PostScript, ...
HP-PJL Only Printer Control Job
Unencapsulated User Job (HPGL/2, TIFF, ...
Figure: Combinations of HP-PJL and User Jobs Accepted by AccXES
The use of HP-PJL is not required so that host systems with print drivers which don't utilize HP-PJL
can still be supported; however, using HP-PJL makes the work of job segmentation and data format
detection error proof.
Examples of job specific control information provided by HP-PJL when encapsulating a user job
include:
• Automatic Collation
• Automatic Scaling and Rotation
• Emulation Switching (explicit or automatic)
Version 10.0
AccXES PJL Interface
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