99
● 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 in the ASCII table, except the block graphics area when you are downloading in the IBM mode.
r
1.
!——
Figure 7-2.Dots can be inside boxes or straddlethe vertical lines of the grid.
Photocopy the grid in Figure 7-3 to help design your new characters. We will use a tiny representation of a chemist’s flask for our example. We decided that our flask will not be a “descender” (printing below the baseline of standard characters), so a figure “l” is written next to Descender on the grid. If your character is a descender, write a “O” next to Descender.
Next we calculate the verticalnumerical values of the columns of dots, and enter them underneath the grid. For example, look- ing at Figure 7-4, we see that in the left-most column there is only one dot, and it is sitting in the “2” box. Thus its vertical value is 2. In the next column,’there is a dot straddling the ver- tical line in the “l” box, and another in the “4” box; its value is recorded as 5.
