ESC/P
ESC/P, short for Epson Standard Code for Printers and sometimes styled Escape/P, is a
Derivation
ESC/P derives its name from the start of the
Variants
There are several variants of ESC/P, as not all printers implement all commands.
- ESC/P J84 adds special support for Japanese computers.
- ESC/P2 is a more recent variant of ESC/P by Epson. ESC/P2 is backward compatiblewith ESC/P, but adds commands for new printer features such as scalable fonts and enhanced graphics printing.
- ESC/P-R is a variant now used by Epson on many inkjet printers.[1]
- ESC/POS is a variant for controlling receipt printers as commonly used at the point of sale (POS).[2]
- ESC/P-K adds special support for Chinese computers.
Current printers
As of 2014, few modern/office/consumer non-Epson printers use ESC/P; instead most are driven through a standardized page description language, usually PCL or PostScript, or they use proprietary protocols such as Hardware Code Pages.[3]
Note many current clone thermal receipt printers still continue to use the ESC/POS command set.
All current Epson impact printers still support ESC/P ,[4][5] all current Epson receipt/thermal printers support ESC/POS and some Epson Stylus inkjets still seem to be using some variant of ESC/P. See the Gutenprint (Gimp Print) project for source code examples.
See also
- Hardware code page
- Printer driver
- CUPS Apple MacOS/Linux printing subsystem
References
- ^ "ESC/P-R Library - Innovation - Epson". Global.epson.com. Archived from the original on 4 January 2019. Retrieved 3 January 2019.
- ^ "FAQ about ESC/POS" (PDF). Seiko Epson Corporation.
- ^ "Driver: eplaser-jp - OpenPrinting - The Linux Foundation". Openprinting.org. Retrieved 3 January 2019.
- ^ "FX-890 Impact Printer". Epson America, Inc. Archived from the original on 8 July 2015. Retrieved 3 March 2014.
Printer Language: Epson ESC / P, IBM PPDS, Okidata Microline (FX-890 Okidata Mode only)
- ^ "LQ-590 Impact Printer". Epson America, Inc. Archived from the original on 8 August 2013. Retrieved 3 March 2014.
Printer Language: Epson ESC / P3, IBM PPDS
External links
- Epson ESC/P Reference Manual: Dec 1997, 2002 Addendum, June 2004
- Epson Developer Site
- List of Epson FX printer codes
- Gutenprint CVSweb view of printers.xml
- The Developer's Guide to Gutenprint, Chapter 5: ESC/P2
- Source of Epson P-R driver for Linux
- Epson ESC/P2 scalable fonts print sample (300dpi scan)