81

six boxes ,wide by nine boxes high.

Horizontally, dots may be centered in a box, or may straddle a line, making the actual character grid 11 dots wide by 9 dots high. Vertically, dots can only be centered in a box. See Figure 6-2.

The minimum width of a character is five dots.

Unlike standard characters that are restricted to a height of seven dots, user-defined characters may use eight dots vertically.

Dots cannot overlap - that is, you may not have a dot

inside a box next to one that is on a line.

You may define any position between ASCII 32 and 127.

c.

i

LL6-2.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

i

Dots

can

be inside

boxes

or straddle

the vertical lines

Figure

of the grid.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

L

Photocopy the grid in Figure 6-3 to help design your new

 

c

characters. We will use

a tiny

representation

of a chemist’s flask

for our example. We decided that our flask will not be a

 

L

“descender”

(printing

below

the

baseline

of

standard

characters), so a figure “1” is written next to Descender on the

 

L

grid. If your character

is a

descender,

write

a “0” next to

Descender.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next we calculate

the

vertical

numerical

values

of the

columns

i

of dots. and enter them underneath the grid. For example, look-

ing at Figure

6-4, we see that

in the

left-most

column

there is

Ii..

only one dot, and it is sitting in the “2” box. Thus its vertical

 

F

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Image 87
Star Micronics NP-IO manual Vertical