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2Character Printing

Control Panel Option

A new option has been added to the control panel under the Grap hics
category. The new option, Vscale, determines whether or not vertical block
characters will be scaled to match the difference between the ho rizontal and
vertical print densities. The option is necessary to be fully compatible with old
QMS Code V version 1 boards that are still in the f ield.
Block characters are build to be printed horizontally at 60 x 72. When the
characters are rotated and printed vertically, it is necessary to scale the
characters to maintain the cell size of the character. Some QMS Code V
version 1 boards do not handle this scaling, so that when a 5 x 7 block
character is rotated and printed vertically, it will actually be 4 x 8. when the
Vscale option is turned off, we will now emulate this.

Block Character

Block characters are printed by putting the characters to be p rinted into the
<data> portion of a Graphics Pass. Thus, the Block Character Comman d is
the same as the Graphics Pass Command.
Each block character is printed within a windo w which includes an appropriate
amount of space for character separation. The block character win dow size
ranges from 0.1 inches (0.25 cm) to 9.9 inches (25 .15cm) in increments of 0.1
inch (0.25 cm). the character window includes 1 dot r ow or column of
intercharacter space for every 0.1 inches in window size. That is, if the
Graphics Pass command is ^M0505000, then the character windo w size will
be 0.5 x 0.5 inches, including a 5 dot-column space to the right of the
character (see Figure 1 on page 27).
Figure 1. Character Window