User's Manual

Chapter 8
User-Defined Characters
The LX-86 has several hundred different characters stored in its
ROM (Read Only Memory). Although this number includes
draft, italic, international, character graphics, special graphics,
and Near Letter Quality characters, sometimes you would like to
have a few more. For those occasions when you need a special
character or a few letters in a different typeface, the LX-86 allows
you to create your own characters and print them just as if they
were ordinary letters.
Defining Your Own Characters
The printout below displays a few such characters to give you an
idea of what can be done, but remember that these characters are truly
user-defined-you create what you need or want.
It may seem that designing a character and telling the LX-86 how
to print it would be extremely complicated, but we have reduced the
task to a simple three-step process: planning your character, running
one program that tests your work and calculates the required DATA
numbers, and running another program to put the character in your
printer’s RAM (Random Access Memory) for use whenever you
need it.
Because the high-resolution NLQ (Near Letter Quality) mode
uses many more dots per character than the draft mode, defining
NLQ characters is somewhat more complex than defining draft char-
acters. You will find the programs for defining NLQ characters at the
end of this chapter.
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