Epson 4500 Defining Your Characters, 4-22 Software and Graphics

User-defined Characters

There is one restriction in designing characters. Dots in the same row may not print in adjacent columns. This means that there must be an empty dot position both to the left and right of each dot that prints.

This is true in draft, Letter Quality, and proportional mode.

Defining Your Characters

The first step in defining characters is to place the dots on a grid just as you want them to print. The examples shown here, like the ones in the graphics section, use an x to represent each dot.

In the illustration below, you see a draft grid with a simple user- defined character planned on it.

Now you translate the dot pattern you’ve created on paper to a numeric format so you can send the data to your printer. Every dot has an assigned value. Each vertical column (which has a maximum of 24 dots) is first divided into three groups of eight dots. Each group of eight dots is represented by one byte, which consists of eight bits. Hence, one bit represents one dot.

4-22Software and Graphics