character uses the top eight dots, write in a one next to the word “Descender” on the layout grid; if it uses the bottom eight dots, write in a zero. In our example, we’ll want the bottom of the flask to line up with the baseline of the other characters, so it will not be a descender. As shown in Figure
m,m,m,m,m,m,m,m,m,m,,m,,
Start column
End column
M, = Descender * 126 + (Start * 16) + End
Total
Figure9-5. We’ve designed a character and decided thatit would not be a descender, hence the “1” written in.
W Rule 2: Dots cannot overlap
As you can see in Figure 9-5 our flask has a nearly continuous outline. But, you may ask, why not make it a really solid line and print all the intermediate dots, as shown in Figure 9-6? Be- cause the dots that straddle the vertical lines in the grid actually overlap those inside the boxes. If we tried to print overlapping dots, the SD-lo/l5 printhead would have to slow down and back
up to print both dotsnot very efficient! To avoid this inefficiency, SD- 10/l 5 will not allow you to detine a character like Figure 9-6. (Actually, you can define it, but when it prints, SD-lo/l5 will leave out the overlapping dots, so that it would print like Figure 9-5.)
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