Chapter 15

User-Defined Characters

If you’ve studied the program examples in this manual, you are quite adept at printing both graphics and text with the FX. In this chapter we’re going to share the secrets of the ultimate in printer control -defining your own characters.

With the FX, you can create any number of new characters, graphics patterns to serve as building blocks for larger designs, or even whole type fonts. You can use these characters for any purpose as long as they fit into the same dot matrix as the ROM characters do-9 dots tall by 11 dots wide (6 main columns plus 5 intermediate col- umns). Figure 15-1shows a comparison of a few sample characters and their ROM equivalents.

 

ROMUSER DEFINED

 

CHARACTERS

CHARACTERS

LETTERS:F , X

F , X

SYMBOLS:

 

, *

NUMBERS:

8 , 0

8 , 0
P L A Y I T A G A I N , F X * 8 0 !Figure 15-1.ROM and user-defined characters

Once you define your own characters, you can use them over and over, just as you use the FX’s ROM characters. The FX prints user- defined characters the same way it does any other ASCII characters.

But before you can take advantage of this fantastic feature, you must first make a little preparation.

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