PCL and 1200 DPI

Question

Is it possible to send the PCL Set resolution command with 1200 dpi (and higher) as parameter?

I've been looking at the spec sheets for HP PCL and it tells me that the only valid values for it are 75, 100, 150, 200, 300, 600.

I am trying to print to a non-HP machine claiming to support HP PCL5 and it prints fine for 300 and 600 dpi, but when I try printing at 1200 dpi, it prints bigger (2x the number of lines, horizontally and vertically). Seems to be using 600 dpi still..

Thanks,

Edward

Answer 1

On most printers, resolution can be set by either PJL or PCL.

In PCL resolution can be set this way:

<esc>*t1200R

A printer that truely supports 1200dpi will honour this setting.

In PJL the device might support something like this:

@PJL SET RESOLUTION=1200

What I typically do in a situation like this is to install the proper PCL driver (5 not 6/XL) for the device on a Windows system, set all the settings in the driver and print something to file (use something simple like some text in Notepad). You should see one or both of the above settings. Another option is to then just swich the resolution back and compare the files to see what's changed.

Answer 2

I will assume you're using Windows, based on the driver comments.

You might want to try bypassing the driver altogether using Raw printing. Here's a Microsoft article that shows how to do it in C#, and searching for raw printing should turn up more if that's not adequate.

The complete PCL 5 manual is available as a PDF from HP as well.