Star Micronics Radix User Manual page 139

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Creating Your Own Characters
125
One thing to remember about defining proportional charac-
ters: a character cannot be wider than the specified width. That
seems obvious enough! For example, if you specify a width of
6
for
a character, the seventh through eleventh columns of dots (if you
specified any) will not print. You must, however, send information
(even if it is 0) for those columns when you define a character;
Radix expects eleven characters following the (ESC) "*"
CHR$(l)
nl n2
sequence.
In most cases, the width you select should actually be at least
one dot wider than the number of columns that the character actu-
ally occupies. This is so that there will be a space (of one dot)
between characters when you print them. If you specify a width
which is exactly the same as the number of columns in the charac-
ter definition, the characters will touch when they print (this is
sometimes desirable-for border characters
or
for large download
characters that are more than eleven dots wide).
Printing proportiond characters
Printing with proportional download characters is much like
using normal width download characters: one command is used
to select the download set or the standard character set. Here's the
command:
(ESC) rfXff
CHR$(n)
If
n
is 1, then the download character set is selected, and pro-
portional widths are used. If n is 0, the standard character set is
selected.
It should be noted that it is possible to use the same character
definitions for either normal width or proportional download char-
acters (if a valid proportional width is included in the attribute byte).
The only difference is the way they are accessed: (ESC) "$"
CHR$(l) for normal width or (ESC) "X" CHR$(l) for proportional
width. The two comnumds work independently of each other, so
that (ESC) I'$,'
CHR!j(O)
will
not
turn off proportional download
characters, and (ESC) "X" CHR$(O) will not turn off normal width
download characters. If you have selected both normal and propor-
tional download characters, proportional will print until you send
the printer an (ESC) "X" CHR!$(O). The printer will then continue to
print with normal width download characters (rather than returning
to the standard character set) until you send an (ESC) "$" CHR$(O).