ON THE SIDE by James Southgate from ZX Computing Dec'83/Jan'84 A short utility allowing you to print sideways, courtesy of James Southgate of Colchester. This program will run on a 16K or 48K ZX Spectrum with a printer attached. The listing first creates the user-defined characters, turns them sideways, enlarges them and then prints them up on the printer. You can then print up messages many metres long, occupying the full width of the printer paper. Best of three The program is divided into three sections. The first section, comprising lines 150 to 300, reads the decimal numbers which make up the user-defined characters and converts them into binary numbers. Lines 170 to 190 check that the message entered contains the user- defined graphics characters. The second section, lines 320 to 410, turn the characters on their side. The final section, contained in lines 430 to 500, takes the sideways characters, enlarges them and sends them to the printer. This version of the program only accepts user-defined characters of A to U, plus the facility of being able to use spaces. Should you wish to use the remaining letters of the alphabet or symbols of your own choice, then you will have to define them yourself - see chapter 14 of the Sinclair Spectrum manual - and then load this program. You should, however, be able to construct a wide variety of messages with the letters already defined in the program given. In use To use the program, enter it, SAVE it to tape and then RUN it. Now input your message - your message may be of any length, but remember that as well as taking time to print out, you will also use a lot of printer paper so make sure your message is spelt correctly! Characters may be used more than once within the same message. Once the printout has been completed, RUN the program again and enter the next message you wish to be printed out. Th listing provided shows the complete program. However, if you wish to utilise parts of the program for use in other listings, lines 150 to 300 could be modified to form a decimal to binary converter program. Also, lines 100 to 410 could be used to turn user-defined characters sideways, retaining their original size, for inclusion in your own programs to improve presentation in some way. To find the binary numbers which make up the sideways characters, you can delete lines 430 to 500 and add the lines shown in Fig.1. = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = Fig.1 430 FOR n=1 TO 8: PRINT "BIN ";e$(n): NEXT n 440 PRINT: NEXT p 450 STOP If you want to find the binary numbers which make up the sideways characters, delete lines 430 to 500 and insert the above. -- Another Fine Product transcribed by: Jim Grimwood, Weardale, England --