Canon MF5700 Control Language

Hi all:

Great MFC, but I can't seem to find out how to program it. I have
programs that need to know what escape sequences it understands (e.g.
HP uses PCL), but I can't find this out. And, these legacy programs
don't use a driver; they command the printer directly. It's
definitely not PCL, as these control codes just print square boxes on
the printer. And, an e-mail to Canon Support proved useless.

Any help will be appreciated! Thanks.

"Matt Stern" <mstern@comprehensive.com> wrote in message
news:IJRSi.430$wc5.101@newsfe12.lga...
> Hi all:
>
> Great MFC, but I can't seem to find out how to program it. I have
> programs that need to know what escape sequences it understands (e.g.
> HP uses PCL), but I can't find this out. And, these legacy programs
> don't use a driver; they command the printer directly. It's
> definitely not PCL, as these control codes just print square boxes on
> the printer. And, an e-mail to Canon Support proved useless.
>
> Any help will be appreciated! Thanks.

Suggest you call Canon support. I find them to be extremely knowledgeable
and easy to work with.

I agree, this line of MF machines is really nice.

As the MF5700 uses some undocumented page control language and the printer
is not even supported by opensource projects like Open Printing, I think you
will have a hard time to get any documentation on how to program this
printer.

If you run your legacy program in a DOS box on Windows, you might have more
success by installing a "printer emulator" which understands PCL, ESC/P or
similar and reprints the job on a Windows printer driver.

I do not know how god the following tools are, but have a look at them:

PrintCapture
http://www.printcapture.com/
QPCPrint
http://www.kilgus.net/qpcprint/
PrintFile and GhostScript
http://www.lerup.com/printfile/
Or give GhostScript and RedMon a try
http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/

--
Christoph Lindemann
Undocumented Printing
http://www.undocprint.org/


"Matt Stern" <mstern@comprehensive.com> wrote in message
news:IJRSi.430$wc5.101@newsfe12.lga...
> Hi all:
>
> Great MFC, but I can't seem to find out how to program it. I have
> programs that need to know what escape sequences it understands (e.g.
> HP uses PCL), but I can't find this out. And, these legacy programs
> don't use a driver; they command the printer directly. It's
> definitely not PCL, as these control codes just print square boxes on
> the printer. And, an e-mail to Canon Support proved useless.
>
> Any help will be appreciated! Thanks.