Re: [Gimp-print-devel] The Truth Behind ESC ( D

[Robert L K. <rl...@al...>]

   From: sh...@al...
   Date: Sat, 04 Mar 2000 18:41:10 +0900

   > But this still doesn't entirely add up.  The vertical spacing is a
   > hardware matter -- the jets are exactly such a distance a part, and no
   > amount of programming will change that.

   You are assuming softweave mode.  But what about in microweave?  Vertical
   resolution is determined solely by paper advances.  I would imagine that
   they have some sort of stepper motor that does the advancing, rather than
   a continuous motor with a timed pulse, so you couldn't support arbitrary
   resolutions, but, probably quite a few more than are currently supported.

True, although ESC(D isn't used in microweave mode:

$ hack-epson.new < 640-360.prn |more

00000000  1b  @ 
00000002  1b  @ 
00000004  1b  (  R 08 00 00 52 45 4d 4f 54 45 31  *P  *M *02 *00 *00 *00  *S  *N
 *03 *00 *00 *00 *01 
0000001e  1b *00 *00 *00 
00000022  1b  (  G 01 00 01 
00000028  1b  (  U 01 00 0a 
0000002e  1b  U 01 
00000031  1b  (  i 01 00 00 
00000037  1b *19  *1 
0000003a  1b  (  e 02 00 00 03 
00000041  1b  (  C 02 00 71 10 
00000048  1b  (  c 04 00 17 00 ca 0f 
00000051  1b  (  S 08 00 a0 0b 00 00 71 10 00 00 
0000005e  1b  (  v 02 00 0d 00 

Of course, given what you say below, it suddenly makes a lot more sense.

   I don't know.  It's weird.  What I imagine is that none of the
   existing printers can really make use of this command because the
   stepper motors controlling paper feeds can't handle it, but, Epson
   is preparing for a long term strategy.  There are probably some
   fancy printers in R&D now that can or may support this kind of
   thing and Epson is laying the groundwork in software early.

   This is, of course, all rampant and baseless speculation, but, it does
   seem to be consistent with the fact that someone at Epson obviously thought
   there was some need to keep this command secret.

That makes more sense than anything else I can come up with.

-- 
Robert Krawitz <rl...@al...>      http://www.tiac.net/users/rlk/

Tall Clubs International  --  http://www.tall.org/ or 1-888-IM-TALL-2
Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- mail lp...@uu...
Project lead for The Gimp Print --  http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net

"Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works."
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