Each time the print head makes a horizontal pass, it prints a pattern of dots. To print figures taller than 7 or 8 dots, the print head must make more than one pass. Each pass of the print head contains one piece of the total pattern, which can be as tall or short as you desire. You don’t have to use the whole page or even an entire line for your graphics figures. In fact, you can use as little or as much space as you like for a figure-and put it anywhere on the page.

Graphics Mode

The command to enter the Graphics mode is quite different from the other commands covered so far in this manual. For graphics, you must specify not only that you want to use graphics mode, but also in what density and for how many columns.

There are two graphics densities, single and double. The format for entering Single-Density Graphics mode is:

LPRINT CHR$(27)"K"CHR$(n1) CHR$(n2);

The CHR$(27)"K" specifies Single-Density Graphics, and the two numbers (n1 and n2) determine the number of columns reserved for graphics. The format is the same as above for Double-Density, except you use CHR$(27)"L".

Column reservation numbers

The graphics mode requires two numbers to specify how many columns of graphics you want because the CHR$ function in BASIC is limited to the numbers between 0 and 255. Since you can specify 480 dot positions in Single-Density and 960 in Double-Density, you need more than one CHR$ number. Therefore, the Graphics mode command is designed to use two CHR$ numbers for reserving columns, and you must supply two numbers even if you only need one.

The first number that you specify (n1) indicates a number of columns (0-255).A 255 in that position says “reserve 255 columns for graphics.” If you don’t need more than 255 columns, you use a 0 for n2.

To reserve more than 255 columns for graphics, the second number (n,) must be greater than 0. But n2 does not represent a number of single dots; it represents a number of groups, each of which contains

256dots. Using a 1 in the second slot means reserve 1 group of 256 dots plus whatever is in the first slot. For Double-Density Graphics,