If you don’t want to do the exercises in BASIC, you don’t have to. Many users are quite happy with their printers without ever learning

load paper. Therefore, you shouldn’t be intimidated by the information in this manual. In most cases the software that you use for word

cating with the printer for you.

In fact, because of Epson’s long-standing popularity, many prog-

need to do is specify in an installation program that you are using an Epson printer. Then the program sends the correct codes for the

explained in the manual for your software program.

We have designed these chapters so that you can concentrate on using the features of the LX-80 instead of on programming, but a few instructions arc necessary. Because the examples in this manual are in Microsoft BASIC (MBASIC), the most widely used BASIC in personal computers, most users can enter and run the programs exactly as they appear in these pages.

If your computer system uses any other kind of BASIC, you may have to make a few changes. Probably the only item you will need to change is the instruction LPRINT, which is the MBASIC command to send something to the printer. Some forms of BASIC use PR#l at the beginning of a program to route information to the printer and PR#0 at the end to restore the flow of information to the screen. If you have such a system, just put PR#1 at the beginning of your program and then use PRINT instead of LPRINT in the programs. If you have any other system, consult its manual to see if any modifications to our programs arc necessary.

In Chapter 3 you saw the enlargements of the three LX-80 pitches. Now you’ll learn how to produce them.

Pica Printing

The first exercise is a simple three-line program to print a sample line of characters in pica, the standard pitch. Just type in this program exactly as you see it:

40 FOR X=65 TO 105

50 LPRINT (ZHR$(X) ;

60 NEXT X: LPRINT

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