Atari XL Personal Computer User Manual


 
The Last Word 3.0 Reference Manual
6-37
character out of the printer. However, EPSON international codes and ATASCII codes
are rarely the same, so using the CODE statement, you can assign an ASCII code to
any of the 29 international character codes.
CODE 1,129
Will sent ASCII code 129 to the printer every time <CTRL+A> is encountered in the
document. You need to set up the codes for all 29 characters in the same way.
The STAR LC-10 manual has various character sets, selectable from software or DIP
switches. We're interested in IBM character set #2, since it contains most of the Atari
international character set in the codes 128-255. Normally these print as italicised
versions of normal characters, so you will want to select the IBM set #2 with the DIP
switches. There is a main bank of 12 DIP switches on the LC-10. To get the characters
we want out of the printer, set switch 1-6 (Printer Mode) to ON (Standard), and 1-7 to
OFF (Graphics). The other switches can be set according to your preferences. There
is one character still missing from the printer's character set ("u" with an acute accent)
which has to be coaxed out by software. The country-specific character set we need
for the "u" acute can't be selected with the DIP switches, so the printer driver needs to
send out the appropriate codes before printing international characters. We can do this
with the INTERNATIONAL statement:
INTERNATIONAL ON 27,82,12
INTERNATIONAL OFF 27,82,0
Every time an international character is sent to the printer, ASCII 27,82,12 will first be
sent to the printer, selecting IBM character set #2. Once the international character
has been sent, the original character set will be selected with 27,82,0.
6.2.4 STYLES
You can also set create up to ten print styles:
STYLE 1,27,45,8
STYLE 2,27,83,2
The first number is the style ID, and the rest are the characters which should be sent
to the printer when the style is selected in the document with s<n>.
Save your printer driver with <CTRL+S> and call it LW.PDR if you want it to load as
the default every time you start LW.
The procedure for most EPSON compatibles should be very similar to the method
outlined above, although unfortunately I haven't had access to such equipment while
writing this manual.
I used to use a Canon BJ-200ex bubble-jet printer set up in Epson emulation mode
with an ICD Printer Connection, and the EPSON.PDR printer driver worked perfectly
with the Canon once the DIP switches were set correctly.
I've supplied the EPSON printer driver along with drivers for all the Atari printers.
Although I don't own an Atari printer, I was able to figure out the codes they use by