Hi Tom

If the printers you use are the normal dot-matrix type, I agree with the
answer given by David.  On the other hand, if you are using a laser
printer, it is possible to do this.  I have done it in the past on HP-laser
printers, and have tested the method on an Hp-Deskjet, as well as on an
Optra laser printer.  I have used the following codes:
Reset printer:  <esc>E
Switch Portrait: <esc>&l0O  (i.e. lower case "L" Zero and Capital O)
Landscape: <esc>&l1O

I have a whole list of codes, that can do different things.  I you need
any, please contact me off-list.

At Neethling
Cape Town

On 9 Aug 2003, at 12:56, David Gillett ([log in to unmask]) wrote:


> On 7 Aug 2003, at 20:24, Tom Glab ([log in to unmask]) wrote:
>
>> I am writing some programs in basic and need to send the escape code
>> to the printer to have it switch from portrait to landscape and then
>> back again from within the program. I have several Epson and
>> Panasonic printers but non of the documentation shows the escape
>> control codes for landscape and portrait. One Epson is C40UX and a
>> panasonic is KX-P2123.
>>
>> <Massive quoted material about XP Activation snipped....>

> You're trying to mix two very different generations of PC printing
> technology, and it's not going to work.
>
> In the old generation, a printer receives a stream of bytes.  Most
> bytes ared decoded to a matrix of dots which forma character and its
> surrounding space, and those get sent to the print head, one column
> at a time, as it moves across a row on the paper.
> In the new generation, "printing" is done by drawing to a virtual window
> in the computer memory to form the pattern of black and white dots, and
> then the dot patterns are sent to the print head without any decode step
> in the printer.
>
> In the new generation, landscape vs. portrtait controls the order in
> which dots are read from the virtual window and sent to the printer.
> The print head still moves back and forth and the paper feeds through it.
> The human is smart enough to rotate the printed page 90 degrees if
> necessary.
> In the old generation, landscape mode involved bying a wider printer
> version that could accomodate paper 11 or even 14 inches wide, usually
> perforated at 8.5 inches high, or using an escape sequence to put the
> printer into "compressed" mode where the head would move a bit less for
> each column of dots, resulting in 11 inches worth of text squeezed onto
an
> 8.5 inch line.
>
> Bottom line is that when a Windows print dialog offers you the choice of
> landscape or portrait mode, it's not going to send some magic escape code
> to the printer -- it's going to just affect the order in which Windows
> reads the dots out of the virtual window to go to the print head.  (There
> are printers where the virtual window is implemented in the printer
> instead of the PC; these accept commands in PostScript or (possibly)
> Windows drawing commands, not text characters and escape codes.)
>
> David Gillett
>

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