{"id":17805,"date":"2025-04-09T00:46:43","date_gmt":"2025-04-09T04:46:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/?p=17805"},"modified":"2025-04-09T00:46:43","modified_gmt":"2025-04-09T04:46:43","slug":"plotter-stuff-on-that-brother-printer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/2025\/04\/09\/plotter-stuff-on-that-brother-printer\/","title":{"rendered":"plotter stuff on that Brother printer"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

That Brother laser printer you bought can also pretend it’s a plotter. One of the requirements embedded in a PCL-compatible printer is an implementation of HP-GL\/2. This is a slightly modified version of the page description language used by HP’s pen plotters. With care, you can make proofs on a laser printer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Take, for example, this figure drawn in HP-GL:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"[decorative]
just some plotter stuff \u2026<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It’s made up of familiar commands:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

IN;SP1;PU4318,5988;
PD3971,5388,4664,5388,4318,5988;
PU4279,6026;
PD3957,5335,4716,5402,4279,6026;
 \u2026<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
But add some magic header bytes (0x1b, 0x45, 0x1b, 0x25, 0x30, 0x42) and some trailer bytes (0x1b, 0x25, 0x30, 0x41, 0x1b, 0x45), and your printer understands it’s a PCL file. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The file, complete with header and trailer, is here: <\/p>\n\n\n\n
hpgl-rotatey<\/a>Download<\/a><\/div>\n\n\n\n
You can print it like this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
lp -o raw hpgl-rotatey.hpgl<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
which produces a page like this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"[decorative]
full page scan of that HP-GL file as printed on a Brother MFC-L2750DW<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
HP-GL\/2, on mono lasers at least, has some differences to the version used on plotters. The biggest difference is that there’s just one pen. You can change the pattern and line attributes of this pen, but you don’t get to change to multiple pens with different colours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The manual for Brother’s HP-GL implementation lives here: Chapter 4: HP-GL\/2 Graphics Language<\/a>. Happy plotting!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
That Brother laser printer you bought can also pretend it’s a plotter. One of the requirements embedded in a PCL-compatible printer is an implementation of HP-GL\/2. This is a slightly modified version of the page description language used by HP’s pen plotters. With care, you can make proofs on a laser printer. Take, for example, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"That Brother laser printer you bought can also pretend it's a plotter\n\n#plotter #printer #hpgl","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7],"tags":[3341,2788,2781,2789,922],"class_list":["post-17805","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computers-suck","tag-brother","tag-hpgl","tag-laser","tag-plotter","tag-printer"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pQNZZ-4Db","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17805","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17805"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17805\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17810,"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17805\/revisions\/17810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}