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But it will also print more slowly at the speed of your typing. In the immediate-print mode, the print head prints one character at a time, as you send it. The printer also moves the paper up so that you can see the current line and then down to continue print- ing.

You can turn the immediate-print mode on with (ESC) “i” 1. Before looking at it, let’s review the normal operation of the print buffer. Enter this program.

20 A$="" : INPUT " TYPE A CHARACTER ",A$ 30 IF A$="" THEN 50

40 LPRINT A$; : GOT0 20

50 LPRINT : LPRINT CHR$(27);"@"

Now type several characters, and after each press the RETURN key. The printer simply puts the characters into its buffer while it waits for a carriage return code. (In this program the RETURN key doesn’t send a carriage return code.) To end this program and print the contents of the buffer, press RETURN alone.

Now add this line:

10 LPRINT CHRS(27);“il”;

And RUN the program. Your printer will now respond to your typing - immediately.

When you are finished, press RETURN alone.

nAdjusting the width of space between characters

This printer provides a command that adjusts the space be- tween all the characters that it prints when the NLQ character mode is on while the DIP switch l-6 is set on. The (ESC) CHR$(32) CHR$( n ) command adds blank space between the characters. The units of space that are added vary in l/240-inch units.

Try this program to see how this works.

10 ’ Demo of adjusting spaces

20 LPRINT CJB$(27);"xl";

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Star Micronics NP-IO manual Lprint CHRS27il