Send commads to printer

[Peter Hansen]

free free wrote:

> i'am writing a python program and now i need to print some stuff. Before 
> print i want to set the text to condensed text and to italic, so i have 
> to send some esc commads to printer.
> 
> my code
> 
> pp=open("/dev/lpr","w")
> pp.write(chr(27)+chr(15))
> pp.write("This should be condensed\n")
> pp.write(chr(27)+chr(52))
> pp.write("This should be italic too\n\f")
> pp.close()
> 
> what i get is text in normal font. I think chr(27) does not send the ESC 
> char to printer.

chr(27) is most certainly ASCII ESCape, so the problem is elsewhere. 
Why not try creating a file containing exactly the characters you want 
to send, and copy that to the printer as a test?  If that works, then 
you can try modifying your above program to write to a file instead, for 
comparison.  If it doesn't work, then clearly you are not dealing with a 
  Python problem, but with something environment- or printer-specific.

-Peter