Changing the character set of an Epson LX-300+

K

kyuuketsuki

I got a Dot matrix Epson LX-300+ which default character set is
American ASCII. However, I need to print text in French on it, coded in
Latin1 ( ISO 8859-1 ). The manual of this printer is very poor about
technical informations. However, it clearly states that this Epson
supports Latin1 character set. The 2 pages control code section lets me
know that this printer supports IBM 2380 Plus emulation, and the
instruction ESC [ T

Therefore, I tried to set character set by feeding IBM control code to
the printer:
ESC [ T 4 0 0 0 n1 n2 where n1 and n2 was set to french charset

I sent the control code by this way on command line:
printf "\x1B\x5B\x54\x04\x00\x00\x00\x21\x8F" > /dev/lp0
The printer output this:
T!A0 ( en fait, ça n'est pas un 0 mais un teta grec )
And if I feed after Latin1 encoded text, it still prints in american
ASCII

I tried some variations I found on the web with less 0..
printf "\x1B\x5B\x54\x04\x21\x8F" > /dev/lp0
printf "\x1B\x5B\x54\x04\x00\x21\x8F" > /dev/lp0
printf "\x1B\x5B\x54\x04\x00\x00\x21\x8F" > /dev/lp0
printf "\x1B\x5B\x54\x04\x00\x00\x00\x21\x8F" > /dev/lp0
Still, printer outputs garbage after this command, and still is in
ASCII

I tried many many other charsets codes ( the last 2 bytes ) and I even
tried with \x1B\x58\x54 since I found a website having that wrong hexa
form of the control code. But it doesn't work.
For those who would wonder on the method of feeding the codes to the
printer, it works perfectly with epson control codes and the printer
obeys any Epson command fed by "printf > /dev/lp0"

I wonder if there is not some control code to send to switch the
printer in IBM proprinter emulation mode, but I cannot lay my hand on
it.
Does anyone have an idea what I could try to activate ISO-8859-1
charset?
I really lack an exhaustive reference of all the Epson and IBM
proprinter control codes. If you have a link, please let me know.

Thanks
 
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