This is what I found out about the Minolta Pagepro 1[234]xxW ESC codes:
(The information contained in this document may be wrong or inaccurate,
this is only what I guessed by looking at the output of the windoof
driver and by monitoring the traffic to and from the printer I have)
ESC sequence layout
1b cmd sq lw ~cmd [cmd data bytes] ck [further data bytes]
cmd printer command
sq sequence number for all ESC sequences in print job, starting
with 00
lw word: length of command data in bytes (a word is 2 bytes!)
ck byte: sum over all bytes of the ESC sequence modulo 256
(... or AND the result with 0xff if you like that better)
note: ~cmd denotes the bitwise complement of cmd
note: words and dwords are always transmitted least significant byte first,
most significant byte last
known commands:
40 - start-of-printer-commands
41 - end-of-printer-commands
50 - select resolution and paper type
51 - new page and set paper format
52 - send raster data
55 - eject-current-sheet-of-paper (that's what it seems to be)
60 - read printer register (?)
6a - alternate read printer register (?)
note: things which are still unclear are marked with an asterisk (*)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
command 40 (start-of-printer-commands)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
model byte 81 - Minolta PagePro 12xxW series
83 - Minolta PagePro 13xxW series
86 - Minolta PagePro 1400W (and maybe later
models)
* data 00 (this data is required!)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
command 41 (end-of-printer-commands)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* data 00 (seems to be don't care data)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
command 50 (select resolution and paper type)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
resolution byte 00 - 300 dpi (seen only with 12xxW)
01 - 600 dpi (12xxW, 13xxW series)
02 - 1200 dpi (12xxW, 13xxW series)
it would be great if someone could test
300 dpi printouts on 13xxW printers - may or
may not work
when printing with different horizontal and
vertical resolutions, this gives the vertical
resolution
horizontal modifier 00 - horizontal and vertical resolution equal
01 - horizontal twice the veritcal resolution
12xxW models drivers from other OSs seem to
support only equal resolution modes - however,
tests show that 12xxW models have no problem
printing with different resolutions...
* data 00 (seems to be don't care data)
paper type byte 00 - normal paper
01 - thick paper
02 - transparency
03 - envelope/postcard
* data 04 00 00 00 (for Minolta PagePro 12xxW)
04 00 04 00 (for Minolta PagePro 13xxW)
04 00 04 00 (for Minolta PagePro 1400W, too)
12xxW models seem to accept 04 00 04 00...
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
command 51 (start new page and set paper format)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* data 00 01 (seems to be don't care data)
page width dword (in dots at current resolution)
page height dword (in dots at current resolution)
* data 08 00 08 00 (seems to be don't care data)
tray byte ff - auto
00 - tray 1
01 - tray 2
80 - manual feed
paper byte 04 - a4
06 - b5
08 - a5
0c - J-Post
0d - cor. post
10 - JIS Y6
11 - JIS Y0
13 - Chinese 16K
15 - Chinese 32K
19 - legal
1a - G.legal
1b - letter
1d - G.letter
1f - executive
21 - half letter
24 - Env Monarch
25 - Env #10
26 - Env DL
27 - Env C5
28 - Env C6
29 - Env B5
2d - Choukei-3Gou
2e - Choukei-4Gou
31 - Custom, Env B6, Folio, JIS Y1, JIS Y2,
quad post
* data ?? ?? ?? (seems to be don't care data)
* data 00 (seems to be don't care data)
flag byte (c0 for 300 dpi printouts, 00 otherwise)
* data 00 (seems to be don't care data)
note: command 51 seems to allow setting a different sequence number
by simply specifying one out of sequence in the sequence...
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
command 52 (send raster data)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
dword bytes in further data bytes section
word number of lines in data section
raster data is appended in the further data section
Adam Bocim <beetman@seznam.cz> came up with an algorithm to compress
the raster data in a format that the minolta understands, and the
implementation in this program is heavily based upon it
(see http://sweb.cz/beetman for the original source)
I tried to understand what his code does and why it does things that
way. My implementation differs in some aspects, but seems to produce
correct results. See the source for details on how the raster data
compression works (this is not difficult, but using the source,
things may be clearer than my explanations). A short outline of the
method is given below to give the general idea and to make reading
the source easier.
note: there always seem to be eight ESC 52 commands per page
the data seems to be divided in eight stripes with the first
one starting at the top of the page; the last one may be short
by a number of scanlines
Compression is done on a per-scanline basis. It uses RLE encoding as
well as a special table driven encoding. This table contains up to
16 bytes which can be compressed using the index into the table. The
table length and its nonempty entries are transmitted at the start of
each scanline. Compression principle works as follows:
while (bytes in scanline left)
three of more repeating bytes?
encode using RLE coding
next four or more bytes in table (or is space for them)?
encode using table indices (possibly filling the
table on our way) unless we have three or
more repeating bytes ahead, where we do
RLE-compression instead
we can't use RLE- or table-compression, so we have to send
literal bytes in chunks of up to ten bytes (Minolta
knows why exactly ten bytes - I don't) until one
of the other methods becomes feasible again
end compress scanline
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
command 55 (seems to be eject-current-sheet-of-paper command)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* data 00 (seems to be don't care data)
note: this command is only used after the last page has been printed
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
command 60 (read printer register (?))
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
register byte i have seen queries for registers 0x02, 0x04,
0x05, 0x53, and 0x81 (this last one on 1350W)
* data 00
see below for reading data procedure
see the source for data items that have been identified
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
command 6a (alternate read printer register (?))
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* data 78 00 04 (on 1200W)
1c 00 04 (on 1350W, seems to work on 1400W
and 1200W as well)
very little is known about this command. reading two chunks on the
1200W will have register 0x53 in the second chunk (page counter!)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
procedure used for reading data
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Just fgetc from the device, the linux kernel does the right thing. The printer
answers in packets of the following layout:
register byte (the register the printer sends - if the register is
unknown to the printer it might send a different one instead)
length byte (number of bytes in the packet remaining to be read)
remaining bytes (packet data section)
You should always read all bytes of a packet's data section.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
layout of a print job:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ESC 0x40
ESC 0x50
while pages left {
ESC 0x51
while bitmap data for this page left {
ESC 0x52
}
}
ESC 0x55
ESC 0x41
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