Pica Printing
The first exercise is a simple three-line program to print a sample
line of characters in pica, the standard width. Enter this program:
40
FOR X=65 TO 105
50 LPRINT CHR$(X);
60 NEXT X: LPRINT: LPRINT
Now run the program. You should get the results you see below, 10
pica characters per inch.
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ[\]^_'abcdefghi
Changing Widths
Now you can try other widths. As explained in Chapter 4, the
FX-286 uses the same pattern of dots for pica, elite, and condensed
characters, but it changes the horizontal spaces between the dots to
produce the three different widths.
In elite mode there are 12 characters per inch, and in condensed
there are
17.16.
The
FX-286
prints in elite when it receives the ESCape
‘WI” command (Escape
":" in Proprinter mode) and prints in con-
densed when it receives the ASCII
15
command. Print a sample line of
elite characters by adding the following line to your previous pro-
gram. (Simply type this line and press RETURN; you do not need to
retype the other lines.)
20 LPRINT CHR$(27)"M";
or
20 LPRINT CHR$(27)":";
This line uses the command for elite, ESCape “M” (or “:“), to turn
on that mode. When you run the program, your printout should look
like the one below.
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ[\]^_'abcdefghi
5-3
