Star Micronics NX-1000 manual Printer command options, Type styles, Page width

A few installation programs may ask you not to select a printer but to describe what your printer can do. The answers to the most often asked questions are: Yes, this printer can do a backspace; and Yes, it can do a hardware form feed.

Selecting (or describing) a printer is the main step in the installation process and frequently the only step necessary. If you selected this printer or any Star, Epson or IBM printer you should be able to use software commands for all the standard printer functions, including bold or dou- ble-strike printing, underlining, subscripts, superscripts, margin control, line-spacing control, and graphics.

Printer command options

Besides the standard printer functions, however, your printer has some capabilities your software may not be aware of, including double- and quadruple-size printing and the printing of special characters assigned to control codes. Some software enables you to define these capabilities as user options in the installation process. Read your software manual to find out whether you can do this and if so, how.

The most useful thing you can do is to define a way to enter the escape code < ESC > , which is the control character with decimal character code 27 (hexadecimal 1B). This code usually cannot be keyed in directly (pressing the ESC key will not work). As an installation option, however, you may be able to assign it to a function key or a special key combination. Doing so will put the full power of the printer at your disposal.

Type styles

Some word-processing software has commands that enable you to change type styles in the middle of a document without a printing pause. To use these commands you must generally define the printer’s type styles (font,? during installation, by assigning them numbers for example. Read your so&are manual for details, and refer to Appendix B for the relevant printer commands.

Page width

Spreadsheet programs in particular may ask you to specify the printer’s column width. The column width of this printer depends on the character pitch used:

Pica		80	columns
Elite		96	columns
Condensed	pica	137 columns
Condensed	elite	160 columns (Standard mode only)

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