But there is another area of *memory in the SD- lo/ 15 reserved for user-definedcharacters. These are characters that you design and download into SD-10/15. When download characters are defined they are stored in RAM (random access memory), which allows you to define or modify them at any time.
Each of these characters, whether it is from the standard character ROM or in download RAM, is constructed on a grid which is six “boxes” wide by nine “boxes” high. The dots used to print a character can be inside any of the boxes. In addition, a dot can straddle any of the vertical lines. As an example, take a look at the enlarged “9” superimposed on the grid in Figure 9-3. As you can see, some dots are inside the boxes, and some are centered on the vertical lines. This, in effect, makes the character grid 11 dots wide by 9 dots high. To see how the rest of the characters in the standard character ROM are constructed, take a look at Appendix C.
Figure9-3.Dotscan beinsideboxesorstraddletheverticallinesofthe
grid.
DEFINING YOUR OWN CHARACTERS
You’ve seen how the engineers at Star designed their characters by using a grid to lay out the dots. Now you can define characters exactly the same way. Make up some grids (photocopy Figure 9-4 if you wish) and get ready to be creative! (Just in case you are not feeling creative, and to make our explanations a little clearer, we’ll be using a picture of a chemist’s flask as an example of a download character. You can see how we’ve laid it out in
