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PCL and 1200 DPI

Answer 1

+2 A:

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.

Douglas Anderson 2009-09-29 19:24:07

Thanks for the reply.. I have set them both in PJL and PCL, using those commands above. It seems the printer doesn't honor the 1200dpi setting.. The marketing material for the printer says it supports true 2400x2400 dpi printing, so I don't know what's wrong.. I already know about the print to file trick, but I guess I forgot, thanks for remindng me :)

krebstar 2009-09-30 01:54:23

I just tried printing but I couldn't find the PCL drivers for it.. Only had PCL6 drivers. Does this mean I have to use PCL6 for this? :S

krebstar 2009-09-30 02:49:09

PCL6 is a compiled stream of data as such you won't be able to make sense of what's in it. You can try though, maybe they have embedded the resolution command in the PJL of th PCL6 driver. I surprised there is no PCL5 driver for it. What's the device? Sometimes (like in the case of Lexmark) they only make 1 PCL driver and you select XL (PCL6) or Raster (PCL5) or GL/2 (PCL5) under the graphics tab. That defines what it outputs

Douglas Anderson 2009-09-30 14:10:20

Sorry, I didn't realize you had commented on this again.. Had gotten busy cause I had to be pulled away to work on another project.. The device in question is a Xerox DocuCentre II C5400. So I checked the driver again, there isn't an option to select XL, Raster, or GL/2.. It just prints in PCLXL. One weird thing though, I printed in Black/High resolution mode, and the PJL command in the file lists the SET RESOLUTION command as 1200. However if I check the advanced options in the driver, there is a combo box to set the resolution, but it only has the following values, Auto, 600, 300, and 200.

krebstar 2009-10-16 08:53:31

However, the marketing material for it states that it has true 2400x2400 printing.. Is this relevant at all? I'm not able to manually set the resolution to 1200, however by choosing "High Resolution" under the Image Quality combo box under the image options tab, it IS printing at 1200 (or so the PJL commands tell me..)

krebstar 2009-10-16 08:55:56

Answer 2

A:

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.

Mark Ransom 2009-11-03 23:32:16

Thanks for answering.. I actually already have a way to send the raw data to the printer.. My problem was that the printer wasn't recognizing the 1200 dpi command when using PCL5 and I was wondering if I was doing it wrong.. Thanks anyway :) I've switched to PCLXL and it works :)

krebstar 2009-11-04 04:11:32

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