DEFINING YOUR OWN NLQ CHARACTERS
As you probablynoticed,NLQ charactersare printedby two passesof the printhead. Halfof the characteris printedon the firstpass, andthe remain- der on the secondpass. The paperis rolledup half a dot heightin between passes to let the print head print dots on the secondpass that overlapthe previousdots, in order to fill in the spacesand producedensercharacters. Additionally,the print head speed is halved, and the dots are printed at doublethe densityof draftcharacters.For this reason,IW,Qcharacterscan containup to 23 dots in the horizontaldirection.
Fundamentally,the processto defineandprintdownloadedNLQ character is the same as for draft characters,exceptthat you must assignthe charac- ter data accordingto the emulationmode,you are using.
Assigningthe characterdata with the Standard mode
There are differencesin the way the attributeinformationis processed.
In the draft qualitymode the attributebyte carriesthe descenderdata, and specifiesthe left spaceandthe characterwidth.In the NLQ mode,ther are
ASCII Code
Left space:
Character width:
Right space:
Figure 5-4. Use this grid (or one similar to it) to define your own NLQ characters with the Standard mode
86
