Epson FX-286 User Manual - Page 92

Chapter 7 User-Defined Characters The FX-286 has several hundred different characters stored in its Read Only Memory (ROM). Although this number includes draft, Near Letter Quality, international, IBM, italic, and graphics characters, sometimes you would like to have a few more. For those occasions when you need a special character or even a whole new typeface, the FX-286 allows you to create your own characters and print them just as if they were ordinary letters. This chapter describes how to use the user-defined character function in the Epson mode. The IBM Proprinter mode also has a limited user-defined character function. For information on its use see the ESCape "=" and ESCape "I" commands in Appendix J. 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 you can create whatever you need or want. It may seem that designing a character and telling the FX-286 how to print it would be extremely complicated, but in this chapter the task is reduced 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 Random Access Memory (RAM) for use whenever you need it. After you have created your own characters, you can re-program seldom-used keys to generate the user-defined characters. For example, you will be able to type < to print . 7-1