an underline that leaves small gaps in the line as demonstrated in the printout below.

T h i s i s u n d e r l i n e c h a r a c t e r .

If your software prints this type of underline, it is using the FX-286’s underline character (ASCII 95), not the underline mode. Because the underline character is only five dots wide, it does not fill the spaces between characters.

Proportional mode

In pica draft mode on the FX-286, each character is given the same amount of space, whether it is a narrow letter like i or a wide letter like w. In the proportional mode, however, the space allowed for each letter is proportional to its size.

The proportional mode, which is available only in Epson mode draft pica, also prints all letters in emphasized. You can see the difference between standard and proportional modes if you enter and run the following program.

10 LPRINT CHR$(27)"p1"20 LPRINT "Proportional mode is on."30 LPRINT CHR$(27)"p0";40 LPRINT "Proportional mode is off."P r o p o r t i o n a l m o d e i s o n

P r o p o r t i o n a l m o d e i s o f f

Notice that you must use a lowercase p for this mode. The next section describes Master Select, which includes another method for turning proportional on and off.

Master Select

The FX-286 has a special Epson mode ESCape code called Master Select that allows you to choose any possible combination of seven different modes: pica, elite, proportional, condensed, emphasized, double-strike, double-width, italic, and underline. The format of the

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