Star Micronics Delta user manual 8WRONG, Add up each column of dots

78 Delta User’s Manual

the boxes. If we tried to print overlapping dots, Delta’s print head would have to slow down and back up to print both dots-not very efficient! To avoid this inefficiency, Delta will not allow you to define a character like Figure 7-6. (Actually, you can define it, but when it prints, Delta will leave out the overlapping dots, so that it would print like Figure 7-5.)

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m,m,m,m,m5m,m,m,nww-h,-

1 -

2

4

8WRONG!

16

32

64

Total

Figure 7-6.Dots cannot overlap; those in immediately adjacent “half columns

will be ignored when the character is printed.

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Add up each column of dots -

Now it’s time to give our creative side a break and get down to some basic arithmetic. That’s where the numbers down the left side of the grid come in. Notice that there is a number for each row of dots and that each number is twice the previous number. By making these numbers powers of two we can take any combi- nation of dots in a vertical column and assign them a unique value. Some examples will make this clearer. As shown in Figure 7-7, if we add the numbers for the dots that print in a column, the sum will be a number in the range of 0 to 127. Each number from O-127 represents a unique combination of dots.

So add up the values of the dots in each column using this system. This way it takes one number to describe each column of dots. In Figure 7-8 we’ve shown our grid with the sums of the columns filled in across the bottom (see if these agree with your