XPM 200HR™
Thermal Printer Family
HENGSTLER
®
Part No. D 690 074
Mod. No. 4 300113 LEV
page 18 of 32
Another family of commands of interest to us here is the text commands. These commands
involve printing text in response to ASCII data sent to the printer. The printer itself contains
one or more character sets. In these character sets, one printable character corresponds to
one ASCII character. There are also commands for positioning and modifying the printout
from these character sets, such as tab and indent commands and commands to enlarge the
internal character set by some factor.
When printing from the internal character sets (we’ll call that “ASCII printing” here for
convenience), characters are sent to the printer and the corresponding characters from the
character set are printed. This has both advantages and disadvantages. The biggest
advantage is that the host need only send one character per printed character. So if 40
characters are being printed on a line, for example, only 40 bytes of data (plus any overhead
for formatting, indenting, etc.) need be transmitted over the interface. In other words, you can
print a lot of text and need send only a little data. The downside is a lack of flexibility. In
today’s Windows
®
world, we are all used to printing exactly what we see on our computer
screens, in the same font, size, etc. as we see it. But with ASCII printing, what will be printed
will be based on the printer’s internal character set.
The other type of printing we’ll call “Graphic printing”. This is what happens when you print to
an ink jet or laser printer from your PC. The information displayed on the screen is sent to a
print driver. This print driver, which is unique for each printer, translates what is on the screen
as a graphic into graphic Native Commands to be sent to the printer.
Everything printed
through a print driver prints as graphics
. It takes a lot more data to transmit graphics than
to transmit ASCII. In our 40 character example, assuming a 12 x 20 pixel character, the
Hengstler XPM 200HR™ printer would require 1,600 bytes to print one line. (Please note that
these are estimates, and that various compression routines also impact the print speed.)
The advantage of Graphic printing, then, is the ability to print anything; pictures, text, photos,
etc. exactly as you see it on your screen. The disadvantage is that to do so, much more data
(40 times as much data in our example) must be sent over the interface.
As a practical matter, then, it comes down to this. If you are doing ASCII printing, you can
use USB or a serial interface. Both are fast enough to handle the smaller amount of data
being sent. But if you are doing Graphic printing, USB is a far better choice due to its higher
speed, and serial may increase the time to complete a printout to an unacceptably long
period.
4.
Unpacking
Care should be taken when unpacking your XPM 200HR™ printer to preserve the packing
material for possible future use. XPM 200HR™ packing is specifically designed to protect the
printer from damage in the harsh environment of trucks and aircraft. Please be sure to use
this packing if it ever becomes necessary to reship your XPM 200HR™ unit.
5.
Major Options
5.1. Presenter
XPM 200HR™ printers can be supplied with an presenter. There are generally three reasons
to use a presenter. One is to prevent vandalism of the printer paper; a presenter prevent a
user from touching their printout until after it has been severed from the paper roll, eliminating
the opportunity for vandals to try to pull all the paper from the roll through the printer. The
second reason is to protect confidential information. If confidential information is included in a
printout that is presented, but the printout is not taken, the presenter can be configured to
automatically retract the printout and store it in an internal reject bin. The third reason is to
keep the floor around the device or kiosk in which the printer is mounted clean. If several
users didn’t take their receipts, they might well end up in a big pile on the floor, representing a
slip hazard. By using the presenter with retract, untaken receipts will be safely stored in the
reject bin.
