Star Micronics NX-10 user manual Creating Your OWN Characters

CHAPTER 6

CREATING YOUR

OWN CHARACTERS

Subjects we’ll cover in Chapter 6 include -

•Designing and printing your own characters;

•Designing proportional characters ;

•Designing your own characters with NLQ.

In the previous chapters of this manual you’ve learned how to control the printer to give dozens of different typefaces. By us- ing various combinations of pitches, character weights, and font selections, you can create nearly any effect you want to in text. And with international character sets and the special text and big characters described in Chapter 5, you can print almost any character you think of.

But if “almost any character” isn’t good enough for you, then it’s a good idea you have this printer! With it you can actually create your own characters. As you’ll see in this chapter, download characters can be used to print a logo, special characters for foreign languages, scientific and professional ap- plications, or any other specific printing task.

DOT MATRIX PRINTING

In order to create download characters, you’ll need some understanding of how dot matrix printers work. They’re called “dot matrix” because each character is made up of a group of dots. Look closely at some printed characters produced by your printer and you will see the dots. Figure 6-1 shows how the let- ter “C” is formed by printing 15 dots.

The printhead in this printer consists of nine wires stacked one atop the other. Figure 6-2 shows an enlarged schematic view of the front of the printhead, showing the ends of the wires and their relationship to the printed draft characters. As you can