Programmer's Guide
PcOS Series 80PLUS
Control Codes
International Character Sets
Rev B 4/13/99
Page 23
International Character Sets and Code Pages
The PcOS Series 80PLUS Printer supports 65 different international character sets. In IBM and
EPOS printers, there have historically been two ways of selecting a character set. The oldest way is by
use of character sets. This mode substituted international characters in the upper 128 characters of the
standard character set to support different countries. As time passed, this approach became difficult to
support. It became a problem for the application to match the characters displayed and the characters
printed. To solve this problem, code pages were developed. The printer and display would use the
same code page and the application would then display and print the same characters. IBM and EPOS
defined new commands to select code pages and left the old commands in effect.
The PcOS Series 80PLUS Printer supports international character sets as well as code pages.
However, both methods are extended in the PcOS Series 80PLUS. This is to allow the most flexibility
for the application programmer.
The PcOS Series 80PLUS printer has extended the IBM code page selection command to allow
character sets as well as normal IBM code pages to be selected.
All characters in code pages as well as character sets are addressed as 0 to 255. (Characters below 32
must be addressed with the [ESC]^<n> command.) Code pages may be changed at any time and are
active for all features including rotated print.
As discussed above, there are two commands for language selection in IBM mode. The first is [ESC] !
which will select one of 19 international character sets. This command will not select all the possible
sets and is provided for compatibility with older programs. The second is [ESC] [ T which will select
any of the code pages.
Function
Select international character table set
ASCII
[ESC] ! <n>
Hexadecimal
1BH 21H
Decimal
<27><33>
IPCL
&%CS<n>
Description
This command selects the international character set, <n>. In standard mode,
the value of <n> is as follows.
<n>
Language
<n>
Language
<n>
Language
64-’@’
ASCII (Slashed zero)
71-’G’
Norwegian
78-’N’
Swedish IV
65-’A’
ASCII (Unslashed zero)
72-’H’
Dutch
79-’O’
Turkish
66-’B’
British
73-’I’
Italian
80-’P’
Swiss I
67-’C’
German
74-’J’
French Canadian
81-’Q’
Swiss II
68-’D’
French
75-’K’
Spanish
90-‘Z’
Publisher
69-’E’
Swedish
76-’L’
Swedish II
70-’F’
Danish
77 -’M’
Swedish III
Table 4 Language table ID’s
