Re: italics on Imagewriter II

[nparker@cie-2.uoregon.edu (Neil Parker)]

In article <4q7as4$gsv@crl2.crl.com> mpearce@crl.com (Matthew Pearce) writes:
>Would someone be kind enough to supply me with the codes to 
>start/stop italics on an ImageWriter II?  The database that 
>came with AppleWorks 3.0 doesn't have it listed.

The Imagewriter II doesn't do italics.  Bold, underlined, and half-height, yes;
italics, no.

Nevertheless, it *is* possible to do italics if you're really willing to work
hard for it.  There are two ways:  You can design a special italic character
set and load it into the IW2 using the printer's downloadable character set
option, or you can do all your printing from a program that prints in
graphics mode.

The graphics mode option is how most native-mode IIGS programs do it.  But
unless you own a program that prints in this fashion, you're stuck with the
downloadable character set option.

The downloadable character set option has the advantage that once the
character set is loaded into the printer, it works just like a built-in
character set--you can switch into it with ESC ' (escape single-quote), and
go back to normal with ESC $ (escape dollar-sign).  The disadvantages are
that you first have to design the character set and find a way to load it
into the printer, and that designing good-looking italic characters in an
8x8 grid is a lot harder than it sounds (I did some experiments with this
once, and they all came out looking horrible).

If you want to try the downloadable font option, FTP to
liquify.isca.uiowa.edu and get the file /4/apple2/apple8/pgms/imwfont.ed.
This contains (among other things) an IW2 font editor and downloader
program.  It's kind of awkward, assumes some prior knowledge of IW2 fonts,
has no docs, and was meant to run under DOS 3.3, but it does work.

              - Neil Parker
-- 
Neil Parker, nparker@{cie-2,cie}.uoregon.edu, http://cie-2.uoregon.edu/~nparker

     "I was going to be a neo-deconstructivist but Mom wouldn't let me."
                                     -- Calvin and Hobbes, 7/13/1995