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42 Operations
What Is a Character Set?
A character set consists of up to 256 printable patterns and printer instructions assigned to 256 possible codes. The character set tells the printer what to do or what to print when each of these codes is received from the computer.
The codes can be assigned to keyboard characters
•• • • • • ), and symbols (such as ©, †, µ,™, barcodes). In addition, codes can be assigned for sounding the beeper, feeding a form, causing a horizontal tab, and so on. Literally, there are thousands of character and control possibilities, but only 256 can be assigned at any one time.
Either you or your application software chooses the active character set. But, the choice is primarily made by the application software. For example, if you draw a box around text, your MS Word application automatically chooses a linedraw character set, or, if you select the Swedish language in MS Windows, some of the keys on your keyboard cause Swedish characters to be printed.
You can assign a default character set for each printer emulation in the configuration menu. (See "Character Option," Page 81.) The preselected character set is automatically set as the active character set after you switch emulations. But, like most configuration default settings, your application software can change the active character set.
Appendix D shows all of the control code and character maps for all of the