Controlling The Printer - Brother HL-Series Technical Reference Manual

Revision C 16/01/96
3. Terminology
3.1. Syntax
The following conventions are used in this description of the Diablo 630 mode software commands:
A letter, control code, word or number in upright bold text is a literal character and should be sent to the
printer as the character code.
A letter or word in italics is a variable and you must substitute the appropriate value or values when
using the command.
A statement element enclosed in angle brackets < > may be of any size up to some specified maximum.
3.2. Conventions
Although this machine is a laser printer and does not physically have a print head, for the purposes of
this emulation description we refer to the location on the page at which the printer is currently
positioned to print as the print position.
The printable area is the area of the page where the printer can place a dot.
The units of horizontal and vertical movement on the page are the horizontal motion index (HMI) and
vertical motion index (VMI). You can set these units as you wish and then move the print position
horizontally or vertically in multiples of them.
The bits that comprise a byte of data are numbered 1 to 8. Bit 1 is the least significant bit (LSB) and bit
8 is the most significant bit (MSB).
The lower case 'L' character is shown as an '
the character '1' (one).

4. Controlling the printer

Commands are invoked using either control codes or escape sequences. You can send them to the printer
as part of a program, using the same command that you would use to print a string on the printer. For
example in BASIC you would use the LPRINT command.
The printer control panel can also be used to set margins and page size. Ensure that the control panel
settings and computer generated settings do not conflict with one another, or you may not get the results
you require.
4.1. The control panel
Refer to the Users guide for a description of how to use the printer control panel switches. You should be
aware, however, that the following can be set using the control panel: automatic line feed (a line feed is
performed with every carriage return), auto mask (two-line top and bottom margins are automatically
used on every page), paper size, top, bottom, left and right margins, the number of text lines per page,
orientation (portrait or landscape), the current font, character set and emulation mode. Conflict between
control panel settings and the settings you establish with software commands (or from applications
software) is by far the most likely cause of unexpected printing results. Use this manual in conjunction
with the Users guide to resolve these conflicts.
' in the Esc printer command, to distinguish it from
Chapter 4 "Diablo 630" - 4