Pica Printing

The first exercise is a simple three-line program to print a sample line of characters in pica, the standard pitch. Enter this program:

40 FOR X=65 TO 105

50 LPRINT CHR$(X);

60 NEXT X: LPRINT: LPRINT

Now run the program. You should get the results you see below, 10 pica characters per inch.

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z [ \ ] ˆ - ` a b c d e f g h i

Changing Pitches

Now you can try other pitches. As explained in Chapter 3, the LX-90uses the same pattern of dots for pica, elite, and compressed characters, but it changes the horizontal spaces between the dots to produce the three different widths.

In elite mode there are 12 characters per inch, and in compressed there are 17.16. The LX-90prints in elite when it receives the ESCape “M” command and prints in compressed when it receives the ASCII 15 command. Print a sample line of elite characters by adding the line below to your previous program. (Simply type this line and press RETURN; you do not need to retype the other lines.)

20 LPRINT CHR$(27);"M";

This line uses the command for elite, ESCape ‘M”, to turn on that mode. When you run the program, your printout should look like the one below.

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ[\]ˆ_`abcdefghi

The next addition to the program cancels elite with ESCape "P" and turns on compressed with ASCII 15:

30 LPRINT CHR$(27);"P";CHR$(15);

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