Proportional Mode - Epson FX Series User Manual

Emphasized Mode (line 30) stays on until you shut it off. Double-
Strike comes on (line 40) before Emphasized is turned off. You see the
result above.

Proportional Mode

Have you ever wondered why most computer printouts don't look
as good as typeset books, even when you use bold characters? It's
because most dot-matrix printers use a uniform width for each charac-
ter (monospacing) whereas typesetting machines set the width for
each character proportional to its size. That is, narrow characters like
i and ! are printed without the excess space that would be used if they
were printed in the same width as m and w.
Now the FX offers you a Proportional Mode on a dot-matrix
printer. In this mode characters are printed with a uniform amount of
blank space between them. ESCape "p1" turns on the Proportional
Mode. If your computer system doesn't allow you to use lowercase
letters, you may use a longer form instead: ESCape CHR$(112) "1"
Here's an example of the difference between Monospaced and Pro-
portional Modes. Enter:
NEW
18 LPRINT "!!!!!!!!!!!!:;
20 LPRINT CHR$(27)
40 LPRINT "!!!!!!!!!!!!PROPORTIONAL ON"
60 LPRINT CHR$(27)
70 LPRINT "!!!!!PROPORTIONAL OFF"
80 LPRINT CHR$(27)"@"
Lines 10 and 40 print the same number of exclamation marks, but the
characters from line 40 are packed more closely. Proportional Mode
prints the characters in Emphasized and strips off all unused space
between characters.
The shut-off command for Proportional print is either ESCape "
or ESCape
CHR$(112)"0".
that it was in before it entered Proportional Mode. As an example, if
the printer enters Proportional Mode from Compressed Mode,
ESCape " 0" returns the printer to that mode.
P
64
"p1"
"p0";
Either puts the printer back into the mode
0"
P