Printer Command Languages

How to Speak "Printer"

Leo Lowy
Director, Sensor Product Management

1
 Print DNA Printers

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 Printer OS

RS232, Parallel, USB

Client/Host/OTG, ZBI
Ethernet, Wi-Fi, Java (future)
Bluetooth, WAN (future) Pre-Parsing,
COMMS App and Data
TCP/UDP, HTTPS,
Manipulation
Licensing
POP3, SMTP, Web
System
Sockets

Label Device
Formatting Configuration
ZPL, EPL, CPCL, And Printing and Status
ZPL, SDG, OIDs,
XML, Emulated
MQTT, JSON
Printer Languages

Fonts, Unicode
Command Parsing,
BMP & PNG, DPI
Multi-Lang support
Media Presentation
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 Printer Command Languages: What To Use
Zebra Programing Language (ZPL) Formatting & Encoding
• 321 Commands
Set-Get-Do (SGD)
• 1100 Commands
Eltron Programming Language
• 86 Commands
Comtec Programming Language
• 148 commands
Java Scrip Notation (JSON) with SGD Config & Status
• Multiple Purposes for Multiple Languages
XML
• Extensible Markup Language
Simple Network Monitoring Protocol
When Required
• 1019 Object Identifiers (OIDs)
Zebra Basic Interpreter
• 92 Commands
As Needed

Emulations
• Multiple Command Languages
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 Zebra Programming Language (ZPL)

• In the Printer OS since 1988

• Use for multiple tasks:

• Used to print fonts, graphics, barcodes, encode RFID tags
• Printer configuration and printer status checking

• Not case sensitive.

• Commands are 2 characters and are preceded by a command prefix (^/~ by default),
with params comma separated
• Many parameters have defaults

• Backwards compatibility controls the creation of new commands and parameters

• Commands exist that are similar but have expanded functionality to maintain compatibility

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 Using ZPL – It’s All About the Dots

• All X & Y locations are measured in printer dots.

• Text begins with ^FD

• ^FD used for text on its own and text within barcodes, serialization fields, etc…
• ^FS is required at the end of text.

• It’s okay to express the whole label as a graphic, but it will be slower to print, resolution may impact
barcode scanning – and field alignment can be impacted

^XA
^FO30,30^A0,50,50^FDHELLOWORLD!^FS
^FO30,100^BY3^BCN,100^FD123456^FS
^XZ

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 ZPL Design Tools

• Text Editors
– Ultra Edit – Very Good
– DOS Editor – Very limited
– BablePad– Great for encodings
– Notepad (Risky)
– ZPL renderers – good, but incomplete. Test with a printer.

• Label Design –ZebraDesigner Essential and ZebraDesigner for Developers

– Point it to a local port (C:\output.txt)
– Let's you quickly design and see output
– Design – Print – Examine – Change – Print – Examine for change.

• Printer Drivers – ZebraDesigner Drivers

– Point them to a local port (C:\output.txt)
– Let's you quickly design and see output
– Design – Print – Examine – Change – Print – Examine for change!

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 Unicode Character Printing

• Part of the Printer OS Since 2005 Supported Languages & Scripts

• Multiple languages, encodings and scripts supported Albanian French Polish
Arabic German Portuguese
• Printer handles character shaping Azerbaijani Greek Romanian
Bulgarian Hebrew Russian
• Useful Tools: Chinese (Traditional) Hindi Serbian
Chinese (Simplified) Hungarian Slovak
– BablePad Croatian Icelandic Slovene
Czech Indonesian Spanish
– BabelMap Danish Italian Swedish
Dutch Japanese Tajik
English Kazakh Thai
Estonian Malay Turkish
^XA^CI28^CW1,B:TT0003M_.FNT^LL1200 Farsi Moldavian Ukrainian
^FO10,115^A1N30,30^FD.‫ﯾوﻟد ﺟﻣﯾﻊ اﻟﻧﺎس أﺣراًرا ﻣﺗﺳﺎوﯾن ﻓﻲ اﻟﻛراﻣﺔ واﻟﺣﻘوق‬ Finnish Korean Urdu
^FS Norwegian Vietnamese
ً ‫وﻗد وھﺑوا ﻋﻘﻼً وﺿﻣﯾًرا وﻋﻠﯾﮭم أن ﯾﻌﺎﻣل ﺑﻌﺿﮭم ﺑﻌ‬
^FO10,150^A1N30,30^FD ‫ﺿﺎ ﺑروح‬
.‫اﻹﺧﺎء‬ Supported Encodings
^FS Big5 UTF-8
^XZ GB2312 UCS-2
Shift JIS UTF-16
JIS Wansung
TIS Johab
GB18030-2000 Unified Hangul Code
Big5HKSCS Zebra Code Page 850
Zebra Code Page 1252 DEMO!
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 ~HS – the “Ping” of ZPL b = paper out flag (1 = paper out)

c = pause flag (1 = pause active)

– A Printer Status command, great
for feedback String 1: eee = number of formats in receive buffer

– Considered by Zebra as a <STX>aaa,b,c,dddd,eee,f,g,h,iii,j,k,l<ETX><CR><LF>

backwards compatibility “MUST”.
o = head up flag (1 = head in up position)
– Contain a lot of data, but String 2:
frequently unparsed, used more p = ribbon out flag (1 = ribbon out)
like “ping”
<STX>mmm,n,o,p,q,r,s,t,uuuuuuuu,v,www<ETX><CR><LF>
– Returns three data strings.
String 3: q = thermal transfer mode flag
– Key data you should consider (1 = Thermal Transfer Mode selected)
using:
<STX>xxxx,y<ETX><CR><LF>
• Printer Status
• Print Buffer status DEMO!
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 RFID Tag Encoding

• Part of the Printer OS since 2000

• Encoding capabilities vary by printer model – use the printer manual!
• Encoding is done using ZPL commands.
• Best Practice is to place the RFID commands at the end of the format.
• Let's encode a Gen 2 RFID Tag in Hexadecimal:

ZPL Commands Command Functions

^XA Start of format
^FO50,50 ^A0N,65 ^FDSimple write example ^FS Prints “Simple write example” on the label at location 50,50.
W,H = write hex Encodes the 12 bytes of data
^RFW,H ^FD112233445566778899001122 ^FS (96 bits) to the tag. The data written is:
112233445566778899001122
^XZ End of format

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 RFID Tag Encoding Continued

• Let's Encode the RFID tag, read the tag, and then print the tag data on label:
ZPL Commands Command Functions
^XA Start of format
When the label prints, the data read from the tag at field variable 7 (^FN7) will be
^FO60,60 ^A0N,40 ^FN7 ^FS
printed at location 60,60.
W,A = write ASCII
^RFW,A ^FD0data ^FS Encodes 0data into the block in hexadecimal format, padded with 8 bytes of zeroes
to make the data 12 bytes. The data written is: 306461746100000000000000
R,A = read ASCII
Reads the tag data into field variable 7 (^FN7). After this occurs, any fields in this
^FN7 ^RFR,A ^FS label format that have ^FN7 will be replaced with this read data. Because ASCII
format was specified, the hexadecimal value is converted back to ASCII format
before being printed on the label.
^XZ End of format

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 RFID Tag Encoding Continued

• Let's Encode the RFID tag, read the tag, print the data & then return the read result to the host
ZPL Commands Command Functions
^XA Start of format
When the label prints, the data read from the tag at field variable 3 (^FN3) will be
^FO50,50 ^A0N,65 ^FN3 ^FS
printed at location 50,50.
W,H = write hex
^RFW,H ^FD0102030405 ^FS Encodes 12 bytes of data (96 bits) to the tag with 7 bytes of zeroes as padding. The
data written is: 010203040500000000000000
R,H = read hexadecimal
^FN3 ^RFR,H ^FS Reads the tag data into field variable 3 (^FN3). After this occurs, any fields in this label
format that have ^FN3 will be replaced with this read data.
Returns the value in ^FN3 to the host computer. Data is sent over whichever
communication channel is established with the host (such as parallel, serial, USB,
^HV3
Ethernet). In this example, 010203040500000000000000 would be returned to the
host
^XZ End of format
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 ZPL Best Practices

• Separate ^ and ~ commands. Formatting & encoding commands have priority. Do this instead:
~HS
^XA
^FO30,30^A0,50,50^FDHELLOWORLD!^FS
^FO30,100^BY3^BCN,100^FD123456^FS
^XZ
~HS

• Separate printer configuration commands from formatting commands. Do this instead:

^XA^PR6^XZ
^XA
^FO30,30^A0,50,50^FDHELLOWORLD!^FS
^FO30,100^BY3^BCN,100^FD123456^FS
^XZ

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 Using Set-Get-Do

• Part of the printer OS since 1995

• A printer configuration and status checking Command—always preceded with ! U1 and
language. Not used for printing 1 must be specified in lower case. Put a space
between ! and U1 and a space between ! U1 and
the command.
• Three main components
• Setvar - used to configure printer settings
2 Attribute—always in double STRAIGHT quotes
• Getvar – used to retrieve printer settings and in lower case.

• Do – used to command printer to take an action

Value —always in double STRAIGHT quotes.

3
• Commands must be terminated with space Only applicable for setvar & do.

character or CR/LF (0x0D, 0x0A)

• Syntax: !U1 setvar "attribute" "value"
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 The allcv

• allcv is a legacy command.

• Returns printer settings in an unstructured format.

• Responses are in a “Branch” order – meaning groups of settings are grouped together.

• A quick, but not machine friendly way to get printer status information.

• Sending ! U1 getvar "allcv" will cause the printer to respond with the allcv list

! U1 getvar "allcv"
bluetooth.
bluetooth.discoverable : on , Choices: on,off
bluetooth.friendly_name : 99J192300067
bluetooth.version : 6.2
bluetooth.date : 01/01/2020
bluetooth.local_name : 99J192300067
bluetooth.address : AC:3F:A4:C8:9C:6B

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 Using JSON

• Part of the Printer OS since 2013

• JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) is an open standard format that uses

human- and machine-readable text for device management.
{"device.friendly_name":null,
• JSON is a popular open standard for exchanging data objects and is "device.company_name":null,
"device.company_contact":null,
well suited to this task. "device.location":null}

• You can use JSON as an alternative to using the SGD (Set-Get-Do).

JSON commands must start with {} .

• The main settings channel for JSON is TCP port 9200. If the printer is
using line_print mode, be sure to use port 9200.

• Good JSON viewer at https://codebeautify.org/jsonviewer

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 Using JSON for Configuration

• To do a setvar in SGD you use the format, as in:

– ! U1 setvar "sgd.name"
– ! U1 setvar "ip.port"
– ! U1 setvar "device.location"

• To set a configuration value using JSON:

– {}{"sgd.name":"value"} sets the variable value to "value"
– {}{"ip.port":"1234"} sets the variable value to "1234"
– {}{"device.location":"my desk"} sets the variable value to "my desk"

• To set several values at once:

– {}{"device.friendly_name":"XXQLJ120900310",
– "device.company_contact":"123-555-1212", "device.location":"My Desk"}

• The response is:

– {"device.friendly_name":"XXQLJ120900310",
– "device.company_contact":"123-555-1212", "device.location":"My Desk"}
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 Using JSON for Status

• To do a getvar in SGD you use the format, as in:

– ! U1 getvar "sgd.name"
– ! U1 getvar "ip.port"
– ! U1 getvar "device.location"

• To get a variable value using JSON:

– {}{"sgd.name":null} returns {"sgd.name":"value"}
• {}{"ip.port":null} returns {"ip.port":"9100"}
• {}{"device.location":null} returns {"device.location":"my desk"}

• You can get several values as follows:

– (){"device.friendly_name":null, "device.company_name":null,
– "device.company_contact":null, "device.location":null}

– The response is:

• {"device.friendly_name":"XXQLJ120900310",
• "device.company_name":"Zebra Technologies",
• "device.company_contact":"123-555-1212",
• "device.location":"My Desk"} DEMO!
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 The allconfig

• You can request an allconfig report using JSON, and it will return all printer settings with their
current settings, defaults, in JSON format.
• Send this: {}{"allconfig":null}

{"allconfig": {"ip.port":{"value":"6101","type":"integer","range":"0- 65535","clone":true,"archive":true,"access":"RW"},

"ip.port_alternate":{"value":"9100","type":"integer","range":"0- 65535","clone":true,"archive":true,"access":"RW"},
"ip.sgd_json_port":{"value":"9200","type":"integer","range":"0- 65535","clone":true,"archive":true,"access":"RW"}, another
setting, ... the last setting}}

“value” - the current value stored in the setting

“type” - Possible values are integer, enum, bool, string, double, ipv4-address, ipv6- address
“range” - The range of a settings. For strings this is the range of the string length. For enums it is the possible enum values.
“clone” - Indicates if it is safe to store this setting and apply it to another link-os printer.
“archive” - Indicates if is safe to store this setting and apply it to same link-os printer at a later time.
“access” - Indicates if the setting is RW (read/write), R (read-only), or W (write-only).

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 allcv .vs allconfig

• Which one should you use? Depends on your situation:

• If you’re creating a new solution, start with Allconfig, it makes dealing with settings and status
easer and more consistent.

• If you’ve embedded Allcv into your solution, keep using it. Consider changing if possible

• You can use both! Consider coding new features in Allconfig, when changing features that were
built using allcv is a challenge

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 Questions

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Thank You

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