Re: Italic letters in HomeWord, how?

[dempson@atlantis.actrix.gen.nz (David Empson)]

In article <wwebster-1305961636370001@47.116.15.87>,
Bill Webster <wwebster@nortel.ca> wrote:
> A friend of mine uses a word processor on the Apple IIe called HomeWord. 
> He thinks it is verison 1.0 (but not too sure).  There is very little
> documentation with the package.  It's a very simple word processor and
> that's why he likes it.
> 
> He'd like to be able to print in italic font.  Bold and underline are no
> problem.  Any suggestions on how to do this from HomeWord?

I am not familiar with the program, but I can probably narrow down the
problem somewhat.

Logical guess time: HomeWord probably makes use of a printer's
built-in facility for printing text (rather than sending graphical
representations for each character on the page, like the Mac and native
IIgs programs), and you have an ImageWriter II printer.

The ImageeWriter II does not provide any way to generate italic
characters using the built-in text printing facility.  There are only
two ways to get italics:

(a) Download a custom character set to the printer, which includes
    italic representations of each character.  You would then need some
    way to select the custom character set for the characters to be
    printed in italics.

(b) Use a program which prints text by sending graphical representations
    of all characters to the printer.  This is much slower, but gives
    maximum flexibility (within the limits of the printer and software).

Another option would be to use a different printer, which can print
italics using the built-in text facility.  This would depend on
HomeWord being able to send an appropriate command to select the
italic font.

-- 
David Empson
dempson@actrix.gen.nz
Snail mail: P.O. Box 27-103, Wellington, New Zealand