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Moving the print position: a preview
With dot-matrix printer, you pick where to print on the page either by moving
the printhead back and forth or by moving the paper itself. Laser printers
don’t have printheads, but the principle remains the same: you have to say
exactly where on the page each picture and string of text is to go, so each page
can be constructed in the printer’s memory.
Instead of talking about printheads we talk about moving the print position
(some people call it moving the “cursor,” using the computer-screen
analogy). Horizontally, you can move the print position with backspace and
carriage return commands. Vertically, you can move the print position down
the page by printing so many lines per inch, or by sending line-feed and half
line-feed commands. You can also move to tab settings both horizontally and
vertically (handy for tables and blank forms, or making room for your
diagrams).
But those aren’t all. Depending on which printer emulation you are using,
you can tell the Star LaserPrinter 8111 to move the print position vertically or
horizontally in increments of:
l/10, l/12 or similar fractions of an inch (pitch settings),
l/48, l/60, l/72, l/120 or l/216 inch (line or column definitions),
l/300 inch (dots), or
l/720 inch (tenths of a point).
These increments reflect the history of twentieth century printing. Pitch,
referring to the number of characters printed in each horizontal inch, derives
from how typewriters space their characters. Lines and columns were first
used by earlier computer printers (on which they are called horizontal and
vertical motion indexes). You already know about the Star LaserPrinter 8111
being able to print 300 dots to the inch. And the unit by which typesetters have
measured text for centuries is the point, about 1/72nd of an inch.
One hint about moving the print position: you can confuse yourself if you use
more than one or two different units during the same session. So decide
beforehand how accurately you need to move the print position (not for-
getting any graphics you want to include). Then stick to the unit(s) you
choose.
The commands that move the print position in all these ways are described
in chapters 4 through 6, with the specific printer emulation you want to use.
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