PCL commands *g12W and *o5W 1

[eric20]

Hi all,

I am working on a PCL decoder.

I have installed a HP Designjet 130 printer on my system which uses printer language PCL 3-GUI RGB 24-bit Contone.I take a bmp and do a print-to-file.My aim is to decode the PCL commands in this output file.I am getting stuck in decoding the commands *g12W and *o5W.I have read a lot but could not find the interpretation of these 2 specific commands.

Can somebody please help me out.

Thanks and Regards
Eric

 

[DansDadUK]

{esc}*g#W is the Configure Raster Data command; it must be followed by # bytes of configuration data, the format of which appears to vary from printer to printer; it seems to be used to set things like colour depth, horizontal and vertical resolution, etc.

{esc}*o#W is the Configure Driver command; it must be followed by # bytes of configuration data, the format of which also appears to vary from printer to printer; I'm not sure, but I think this is used to effectively add new 'printer-specific' instructions to different printers, the detail being in the (printer-specific) configuration data.

 

[eric20]

thanx DansDadUK.You are right that the configure raster data command is used to set in horizontal and vertical resolutions of the components and also their intensity levels.My understanding says that this command is used in those printers which support asymmetric resolution(e.g.600x300).This command has different forms depending on the format byte which is always the first byte of the configuration data.Correct me if I am wrong.

e.g.*g26W[02 04 02 58 02 58 00 02......] means there is 26 bytes of configuration data.The first byte always stands for the format number,hence in this case the format number is 2[02].In "Format 2" the second byte[04] stands for the number of components ,the third and fourth bytes for the horizontal resolution of the first component,the fifth and sixth for the vertical resolution of the first component and so on.Now the values that these bytes store varies from printer to printer but the meaning of each byte is decided by the format number.

Now what I am getting is *g12W[06 1F 00 01 01 2C 01 2C 0A 01 20 01].The first byte is [06] which is the format number.Now I do not know this format and hence am not able to interpret the following 11 bytes of data.Without knowing the resolution (which is embed in this byte stream)it shall not be possible for me to recreate the bmp in my decoder and hence I cannot even ignore this command.
Any suggestions !!

Thanx
Eric

 

[DansDadUK]

Eric

I don't have any information on Format 6, sorry.

It is presumably something which has been created for the newer generation of DeskJet devices (and perhaps even Colour LaserJet?)

Just what is your 'decoder' attempting to do? Is it effectively a PCL Viewer (like SwiftView), or what?
If it is, perhaps you could obtain clues by running your data through SwiftView (or other) viewer?

Chris

 

[jlasman]

I think you could be pretty confident the the resolution is the 01 2C (300 dpi).

Jim Asman