The following information is provided as is, and the authors take no responsibility for the correctness.

Brother P-Touch

The Brother P-Touch label printers use their own page description language, here called “Brother P-Touch”

Reference

This reference information is based on work from

John Glenstrup's Brother P-Touch driver for CUPS
Renaud Bompuis's Brother QL-500/QL-550 label printer site

There's now an official Reference QL Series, PT-E550w/P750w,PT-9500PC

Implementation examples: ptprint.rb - very simple and transparent in ruby, in perl, blabel in perl

See preview of your data to be printed online.

Introduction

Each invocation of this filter is one job, containing a number of pages, each page containing a number of lines, each line consisting of a number of pixel bytes.

Output consists of job-related printer initialisation commands, followed by a number of pages, each page consisting of page-related commands, followed by raster line data. Each page is followed by a finish page or (after the final page) finish job command.

The following printer command language, printer, and tape information has been deduced from many sources, but is not official Brother documentation and may thus contain errors. Please send any corrections based on actual experience with these printers to the maintainer.

Job-related commands

Ascii	Hex	Description
ESC @	1b 40	Initialise Clear print buffer
ESC i D #	1b 69 44 ##	Set print density bit 0-3: 0=no change, 1-5=density level
ESC i K #	1b 69 4b ##	Set half cut bit 2: 0=full cut, 1=half cut
ESC i R ##	1b 69 52 ##	Set transfer mode ##: ?: 1=?
ESC i S	1b 69 53	Send printer status
M ##	4d ##	Set compression ##: Compression type: 2=RLE

Page-related commands

Ascii	Hex	Description
ESC i A ##	1b 69 41 ##	Bit 0: Enable cutter (observed on QL-560)
ESC i c #1 #2 #3 NUL #4	1b 69 63 #1 #2 #3 00 #4	Set width & resolution 360x360DPI: #1 #2 #4 = 0x84 0x00 0x00\\360x720DPI: #1 #2 #4 = 0x86 0x09 0x01 #3: Tape width in mm
ESC i M #	1b 69 4d ##	Set mode bit 0-4: Feed amount (default=large): 0-7=none, 8-11=small, 12-25=medium, 26-31=large bit 6: Auto cut/cut mark (default=on): 0=off, 1=on bit 7: Mirror print (default=off): 0=off, 1=on. (note that it seems that QL devices do not reverse the data stream themselves, but rely on the driver doing it!)
ESC i z #1 #2 #3 #4 #5 #6 NUL NUL NUL NUL	(1b 69 7a #1 #2 #3 #4 #5 #6 00 00 00 00)	Set media & quality #1, bit 6: Print quality: 0=fast, 1=high #2, bit 0: Media type: 0=continuous roll, 1=pre-cut labels #3: Tape width in mm #4: Label height in mm (0 for continuous roll) #5 #6: Page consists of N=#5+256*#6 pixel lines
ESC i d #1 #2	(1b 69 64 #1 #2)	Set margin Set size of right(?) margin to N=#1+256*#2 pixels
FF	(0c)	Form feed Print buffer data without ejecting.
SUB	(1a)	Eject Print buffer data and ejects.

Line-related commands

Ascii	Hex	Description
G #1 #2 [data]	47 #1 #2 [data]	Send raster line data consists of N=#1+256*#2 bytes of RLE compressed raster data.
Z	5A	Advance tape Print 1 empty line
g #1 #2 [data]	67 #1 #2 [data]	Send raster line data consists of N=#2 bytes of uncompressed raster data.
ESC * ' #1 #2 [data]	1B 2A 27 #1 #2 [data]	Bit image printing (BIP) Print N=#1+256#2 lines of 24 pixels; data consists of 3N bytes

Compressed-data-related commands

Bytes	Description
#1 [data]	#1 >= 0: Print uncompressed data consists of 1+#1 uncompressed bytes
#1 #2	#1 < 0: Print compressed #2 should be printed 1-#1 times

#1 is represented as a 2-complement signed integer.

Printer model characteristics

The following table lists for each model what kind of cutter it has (manual, auto, half cut), what kind of pixel data transfer mode it requires, its resolution, number of print head pixels, number of bytes of pixel data that must be transmitted per line (regardless of actual tape width!), and what kinds of tape it can take.

For PC models, pixel data must be centered, so narrow tapes require padding raster data with zero bits on each side. For QL models, labels are left-aligned, so pixel data must be right aligned, so narrow tapes require padding raster data with zero bits at the end.

For PC-PT, only the central 24 pixels (= 3,4mm!) can be used for pixel-based graphics. It might be possible to print several strips of 24 pixels side-by side by issuing CR and line-positioning commands.

Model	Cutter	Xfer	DPI	Pixels	Bytes	Tape
QL-500	manual	ULP	300	720	90	DK12-62mm
QL-550	auto	ULP	300	720	90	DK12-62mm
QL-560	auto	ULP	300	720	90	DK12-62mm
QL-650TD	auto	ULP	300	720	90	DK12-62mm
PT-PC	auto	BIP	180	128	3	TZ6-24mm
PT-18R	auto	RLE	180	128	16	TZ6-18mm
PT-550A	auto	RLE	180	128	16	TZ6-36mm
PT-1500PC	manual	RLE	180	112	14	TZ6-24mm
PT-1950	auto	RLE	180	128	16	TZ6-18mm
PT-1950VP	auto	RLE	180	112	14	TZ6-18mm
PT-1960	auto	RLE	180	96	12	TZ6-18mm
PT-2420PC	manual	RLE	180	128	16	TZ6-24mm
PT-2450DX	auto	RLE	180	128	16	TZ6-24mm
PT-2500PC	auto	RLE	180	128	16	TZ6-24mm
PT-2600	auto	RLE	180	128	16	TZ,AV6-24mm
PT-2610	auto	RLE	180	128	16	TZ,AV6-24mm
PT-3600	auto/half	RLE	360	384	48	TZ,AV6-36mm
PT-9200DX	auto/half	RLE	360	384	48	TZ6-36mm
PT-9200PC	auto/half	RLE	360	384	48	TZ6-36mm
PT-9400	auto/half	RLE	360	384	48	TZ6-36mm
PT-9500PC	auto/half	RLE	360 360×720	384	48	TZ,AV6-36mm
PT-9600	auto/half	RLE	360	384	48	TZ,AV6-36mm

Tape characteristics

Tape	Width	Print Area	Margins	DPI
62 mm	61.0 mm	720 pixels	0.5 mm	300
36 mm	27.1 mm	384 pixels	4.5 mm	360
24 mm	18.0 mm	128 pixels	3.0 mm	180
18 mm	12.0 mm	85 pixels	3.0 mm	180
12 mm	8.0 mm	57 pixels	2.0 mm	180
9 mm	6.9 mm	49 pixels	1.0 mm	180
6 mm	3.9 mm	28 pixels	1.0 mm	180

Notes

Pixels bytes sent are printed from right to left, with bit 7 rightmost!
Bit image printing (BIP) using “ESC * ' #1 #2 …data…” probably only works for the PT-PC model.
QL Printer documentation might state that the print area is less than 61mm, which is probably to ensure that printed pixels stay within the tape even if it is not precisely positioned. The print head really IS 720 pixels.
PT-18R cannot handle more information after the image data and the final formfeed or eject byte. Any more information after '0c' or '1a' is taken as the start of a new job so it keeps waiting for more data.

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