SATO CX208/212 - Manual (Page 5)

CX208/212 PROGRAMMING GUIDE
INTRODUCTION
This section presents the commands that are used with the SATO CX208/212 printers
to produce labels with logos, bar codes and alphanumeric data. The commands listed
include all revisions of firmware up to and including P2.15.
The following information is presented in this section:
• The SATO Programming Language
• Selecting Protocol Control Codes
• Using Basic
• The Print Area
• Printer Configuration
• Command Codes
THE SATO PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE
A programming language for a printer is a familiar concept to most programmers. It is
a group of commands that are designed to use the internal intelligence of the printer.
The commands, which are referred to as SATO Command Codes, contain
non-printable ASCII characters (such as <STX>, <ETX>, <ESC>) and printable
characters. These commands must be assembled into an organized block of code to be
sent as one data stream to the printer, which in turn interprets the command codes
and generates the desired label output. The programmer is free to use any
programming language available to send the desired data to the printer.
The command codes used are based upon “Escape” (1B hexadecimal) sequences.
Typically there are four types of command sequences:
<ESC>{Command}
These commands generally tell the printer to perform a specific action, like “clear the
memory.”
<ESC>{Command} {Data}
Commands with this format tell the printer to perform a specific action which is
dependent upon the following data, like “print X labels”, where the value for X is
contained in the data.
<ESC>{Command} {Parameter}
These commands set the operational parameters of the printer, like “set the print
speed to 3.”
SATO CX208/212 Printers PN 9001092 Rev. A Page 1