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| Delta User’s Manual |
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features of printers like Delta. They usually provide for some |
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method of making bold characters and underlining. But Delta can |
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do much more than that. The people that write word processing | - | ||||||||
programs do, however, know that there are a lot of different print- | |||||||||
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ers on the market, and so they usually, (but not always) provide a | - | ||||||||
way of sending | special | codes | to a printer. We will study one exam- | ||||||
ple of this to see how a typical word processor handles it. Once |
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you understand | the concept | you should be able to use your pro- | - | ||||||
gram manual to figure out how your word processor does it. |
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The program that we will study is the EasyWriter | word proc- | - | |||||||
essor for the IBM Personal Computer. This uses a fairly typical |
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method of handling special codes. Generally, word processing | - | ||||||||
programs don’t want you to put | |||||||||
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They “know” that they won’t print anything, and so they “pro- | - | ||||||||
tect” you by not letting | you use them. But the | codes | |||||||
are the ones that you need to use Delta’s features. So EasyWriter |
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provides a way | to override this protection. | If you precede | a spe- | - | |||||
cial code with a |
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code. |
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Let’s look at a specific example. Suppose you want to print the |
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title of a book in italic. The code sequence to select italic type is |
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Escape 4 (that’s two separate characters). Entering the 4 is no |
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problem; it’s a printing character so EasyWriter won’t object |
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(although in this case it’s not going to print). The Escape, however, |
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is a |
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enter the Escape | code first enter | (hold the Ctrl key while | - | ||||||
you press the letter 0). Then press the Esc key. The Escape charac- |
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ter shows on the screen | as a left pointing arrow. Now just type the | - | |||||||
number 4 and you’re done. |
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When you want to end the italic, you need to enter Escape 5. | - | ||||||||
Use the same procedure: enter | |||||||||
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You can use many of Delta’s features this way. Find the codes - |
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that you need in Appendix K, and then if necessary, use Appendix |
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M to translate the codes into the form your word processor uses. |
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A note to WordStar users: WordStar is probably the most pop- |
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ular word processing program in the world. But it provides no |
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way to enter | special printer | control codes from the | keyboard. | - | |||||
WordStar does, however, provide you with a way to use some of |
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Delta’s advanced features. WordStar has four special commands | |||||||||
that you can use to access Delta’s features. These are called “user | |||||||||
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printer controls” and are | - | ||||||||
and | R. You might use two of these to turn italic | on and | |||||||
off and the other two for some other function. The process of set- |
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ting up these codes is | called “patching” | and is done with the | - | ||||||
