Epson FX-BO Specifiche Scaricare il pdf (Pagina 190)

Chapter 13

Plotter Graphics

As you work with dot graphics, you may run into printer limita-

tions because dot-matrix printers are designed primarily for fast print-

ing of text. The FX, however, can also print high-resolution graphics,

as you saw in the STRATA program. But the side-to-side motion of a

dot-matrix printer makes it virtually impossible to place the print head

in the middle of a page and trace out a lazy spiral or even a circle.

Does that mean the FX can’t create the same type of figures that a

plotter does? Certainly not. You just have to approach the problem a

little differently than you would in working with a plotter. In fact,

with a little advance planning, you can use the dot graphics modes to

simulate the activity of a full-fledged plotter.

The secret to bringing out the plotter in your FX is to apply the

capabilities of your computer system. You can use its memory as a

sketch pad. With mathematical formulas, you can design any sort of

pattern. Once you’ve got your picture complete in memory, you can

send it line by line to

the

printer. When you use this approach, the

printer doesn’t have to act like a plotter to draw like one.

The figures printed in this chapter show how easy it is to simulate

plotter graphics with the FX. You start by using the computer’s mem-

ory as a sketch pad for the plotting. To do this, you set up a correspon-

dence between a pattern of dots on paper and a set of values

that you

arrange in the computer’s memory (Figure

13-1).

Arrays

The structure in computer memory in which you store your pattern

of dots is called an array. Think of an array as an ordered set of cubby

173

1 2 ... 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 ... 375 376

Nessun commento

Epson FX-BO Specifiche Pagina 190