SCO Unix/System V Printing FAQ

This article is from a FAQ concerning SCO operating systems. While some of the information may be applicable to any OS, or any Unix or Linux OS, it may be specific to SCO Xenix, Open There is lots of Linux, Mac OS X and general Unix info elsewhere on this site: Search this site is the best way to find anything.

What are the escape sequences to select the trays on my HP Laser printer?

Back before the dinosaurs died, printers came with manuals that had all this stuff in them. Nowadays, you are lucky if it's on the CD, and if it is, good luck finding it. Here's a few that may help for HPLaserjets:

The octal codes are what you'd probably use in an interface script:

echo "\033\030\c"

Thanks to Jean-Pierre Radley and Richard Seeder

For a complete list of Laserjet codes see HP LaserJet Series Printers - PCL Commands, Basic Page Formatting, and Font Selection.

The ones to use for printing text:

echo "\033E\c" # Reset Printer
echo "\033&k2G\c" # Set line termination mode (LF=LF/CR).

Flush All complete pages \E&r0F 
Flush all page data \E&r1F
 

I don't find these two mentioned at that HP document.

They are referenced in this PCL 5 Technical reference PDF, which explains that these can be used to free printer memory but that they will reduce performance.

See PCL6 also.

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