Epson MX-80 User Manual page 38

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Chapter 9

.Javeat Printer

Only one minor restriction on Emphasized Printing. It cannot be used in the

Compressed mode. If we try, the Printer automatically switches to normal width

but stays in Emphasized mode.

It's only logical, if we think about it. The Compressed mode has the dots spaced

very close together. If we turn all the engines up to Warp 7 it might just blow the

print needles right thru the paper.

Oh, yes. Emphasized printing is only half as fast as regular printing. Don't want to

overheat the engines you know. If we then add double strike, we cut the speed in

half again. Quality has its price!

A Word About Word Processing

Several very good word processing programs are widely used on microcomputers,

including Scripsit ® and The Electric Pencil ®

They share a common weakness, however. As of today, they do NOT allow us to

send OUR choice of CHRS commands to the Printer. We can partially overcome

this deficiency by sending our commands to the Printer in advance of printing

rom the word processing program.

Let's say, for example, we want to print a high quality business letter by using

double-strike, and make several carbons. All we have to do is send the following

instructions before calling up the word processing and printing the letter:

> L P R I N T

C H R $ ( 2 7 ) " E "

> L P R I N T

C H R $ ( 2 7 ) " G "

Escape E turned on Emphasized Printing, and Escape G turned on Double Strike,

for the carbons. If we'd wanted, we could have sent a CHR$(15) to set up

Compressed Mode, in place of Emphasized Printing.

We recall that those 3 commands turn features on that stay on until specifically

turned off by their "opposite" Escape codes. Sending the computer off into a

word processing program will not affect what the Printer has stored in its own

memory.

c *

Remember, if we lose track of what Printer features are ON and O F F , just switch

the Printer OFF, then back ON — and it reinitializes itself, returning all the soft-

ware controllable features to their original or "default" conditions.