User-defined Characters

There is one restriction in designing characters. Dots in the same row may not print in adjacent columns. That is, there must be an empty dot position to the left and to the right of each dot that prints. This is true in draft, Letter Quality, and proportional.

Defining your characters

The first step in defining characters is to place the dots on a grid just as you want them to print. The examples here, like the ones in the graphics section, use an X to represent each dot.

In the illustration below, you see a draft grid with a simple user-defined character planned on it.

Now you translate the dot pattern you’ve created on paper to a numeric format so you can send the information to your printer. Every dot has an assigned value. Each vertical column which has a maximum of 24 dots is first divided into three groups of eight dots. Each group of eight dots is represented by one byte, which consists of eight bits. Hence, one bit represents one dot.

Software and Graphics 4-23