Chapter 5

User-Defined Characters

With the SQ-2000, it is possible to define and print characters of your own design. This can be useful if you want to design an entirely new alphabet or typeface. You can also create characters for special applications (for example, mathematical or scientific symbols). Or, you may want to create graphic patterns with user- defined characters to serve as building blocks for larger designs. How these are done is the subject of this chapter.

Dot-Matrix Printing

In order to use user-defined characters, you need to understand how dot-matrix printing works. The process is called dot-matrix printing because each character is composed of small dots arranged on a matrix, or grid. To see how that character grid gets printed, let’s take a look at the print head itself.

The print head

The SQ-2000 print head does not print an entire character at one time. Instead, it prints dots one column at a time. The print head contains 24 ink nozzles that appear to be arranged in a vertical column. If you were to remove the print head and look at the nozzles, you would see two staggered columns of 12 nozzles. However, the timing is such that they print as one continuous column of 24 nozzles.

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