Printer page description language
Xerox Escape Sequence or XES is a page description language (PDL) developed by Xerox corporation and introduced with their 2700 laser printers in 1982. XES offers similar capabilities to Hewlett-Packard's Printer Command Language (PCL), which first appeared in 1984. XES is supported by most Xerox laser printers including the 2700. 3700, 4011, 4030, 4045, 4197, 4213, 4235, and 4700.[1]
XES is sometimes known as UDK, from User Defined Key, the character which introduces the printer command. Commands are normally introduced by the escape character (ESC - ASCII '1B'x, EBCDIC '27'x ). This character may be changed in the data stream by the command =UDK=c, where c is the value to be used going forward. c may be any character except U, D, K, space, or 0 through 9.[2]
XES commands perform the following functions[2]
| Fonts |
Load or unload a font
change font for subsequent text. Only raster fonts are supported.
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| Text placement |
Place text in absolute position on page or relative to current position
justify or center text
print subscript, superscript, bold, underscore, or overstrike
specify line spacing, horizontal tab
vertical tab
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| Line drawing |
draw a line between two positions on the page
|
| Page formatting |
Specify page margins
set and clear horizontal tabs
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| Page merge |
Store or unload a page of data available to merge with subsequent pages
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| Graphics |
A graphic window is a rectangular area on a page in which a raster graphic image may be printed.
The image is transmitted, in sixel encoding, following with the command, and may be magnified 1, 2, or 4 times.
A graphic window may be created and stored, and called out for printing as required, for example to print a logo on each page.
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| Miscellaneous |
Print current page
specify language or use customized character mapping table
reset printer
data monitor mode (print datastream in hexadecimal)
set or clear positions for simulated carriage control tape
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References
External links
