DAISYWHEEL PICTURES

[file: daisywheel]



Two very short programs which perform a unique feat, producing graphic

style pictures on a daisywheel printer. Actually any printer could

produce this type of pic. and it could easily be modified to operate

via the Interface 1 RS232 Interface on a serial printer.



The author of this minor miracle is Charles Barron who lives in

Aberdeenshire. He explains:



"The copy routine normally looks at each pixel on the screen and

prints a dot if it is coloured (INK) and leaves it blank if it is not

(PAPER) coloured. My routine prints a * instead of a dot, this means

of course that it is also eight times the usual size!"



"First of all give the printer a command to print in as compressed a

mode as possible so the *s are as close together as possible, also use

the least line spacing you can on your printer, possibly 8 or 10 lines

per inch instead of the usual 6."



"The routine prints sideways and needs to get 176 characters per line.

If you cannot do this with your printer then you will have to settle

for only printing part of the screen. This can be calculated by taking

the maximum CPL your printer is capable of from 175 and replacing the

0 in line 60 with the result."



"Finally switch off the automatic perforation skip if it is enabled on

your printer, and then, at last, load and run the program and have

your screen picture ready on tape for the program to load and then print"



See Figure 1 for example. These clever printer routines win Charles

Barron the Star Cut award for this month.