Chapter 8

User-Defined Characters

The LX-80has 416 different characters stored in its ROM (Read Only Memory). Although this number includes draft, italic, interna- tional, special graphics, and Near Letter Quality characters, sometimes you would like to have a few more. For those occasions when you need a special character or a few letters in a different typeface, the LX-80 allows you to create your own characters and print them just as if they were ordinary letters.

Defining Your Own Characters

The printout below displays a few such characters to give you an idea of what can be done, but remember that these characters are truly user-defined-you create what you need or want.

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It may seem that designing a character and telling the LX-80 how to print it would be extremely complicated, but we have reduced the task to a simple three-step process: planning your character, running one program that tests your work and calculates the required DATA numbers, and running another program to put the character in your printer’s RAM (Random Access Memory) for use whenever you need it.

Because the high-resolution NLQ (Near Letter Quality) mode uses many more dots per character than the draft mode, defining NLQ characters is somewhat more complex than defining draft char- acters. You will find the programs for defining NLQ characters at the end of this chapter.

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