Chapter 6

Graphics

Your P-80 is capable of printing special graphics characters and dot graphics, but you do need some programming knowledge to use these graphics features. This chapter is included for those who wish to design their own programs to take advantage of the printer’s graphics capabilities.

Some computers allow you to draw figures on the screen using graphics characters and then dump them to the printer using a screen dump command. Check your computer’s documentation to see if it contains this feature.

Graphics Characters

The P-80 contains a set of special graphics characters which are the same graphics characters available on the GenevaTM PX-8™. The graphics characters are accessed with ASCII codes 128 through 159. If your computer cannot access codes greater than 127, you will not be able to use the graphics characters.

To access the graphics characters in BASIC, you use CHR$(n) where n is an ASCII code between 128 and 159. The following program prints out all of the special characters in Expanded mode. Type the program in exactly as shown and RUN it.

10 LPRINT CHR$(27)"W1"20 FOR X=128 TO 13830 LPRINT CHR$(X)" ";40 NEXT X: LPRINT50 FOR X=139 TO 14960 LPRINT CHR$(X)" ";70 NEXT X: LPRINT

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