CHAPTER 4
FORMATTING TEXT
Subjects covered in Chapter 4 include- * The carriage return and line feed
•The amount of space between lines
•Moving to the next page
•The number of lines on a printed page
•Horizontal and vertical tabs
•Setting margins - left, right, top and bottom
•Centering and aligning
Chapter 3 showed us the basic techniques for using the printer. Now we’re ready for the more advanced ones. We’ll con- centrate on changing the appearance of the page to suit our needs.
LINES AND LINE SPACING
nStarting a new line
Up until now the only time we have thought about printing on a new line is when we didn’t want it to happen. We learned that putting a semicolon (;) at the end of a BASIC line will not end the line of printing. So somehow, the computer tells the printer when to end one line and start another.
There are two codes that are used to end one line and start another. They are carriage return (CHR$(13)) and line feed (CHR$(lO)). Like the escape codes, they have been given ab- breviations which you’ll find many texts (including this one): (CR) and (LF). The codes are simple, but their action is a little confusing (especially with BASIC). Let’s begin with the carriage