Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!munnari.oz.au!uokmax!norlin
From: norlin@uokmax.ecn.uoknor.edu (Norman Lin)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc
Subject: Graphics on a Daisy Wheel Printer?
Summary: Can Daisy Wheel printers do graphics?
Keywords: DAK, daisy wheel, graphics
Message-ID: <1990Oct23.053846.30151@uokmax.ecn.uoknor.edu>
Date: 23 Oct 90 05:38:46 GMT
Distribution: comp
Organization: Engineering Computer Network, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK
Lines: 29

Years ago I saw an ad by, I believe, DAK Industries for a program which
purportedly allowed daisy wheel printers to print graphics comparable to
that produced by dot-matrix printers.  The blurb said that the program
used the escape codes for the printer to change the HMI (horizontal motion
increment) and VMI (vertical motion increment) of the printer to fractions
of inches, and then to use the "." character to place the dots on the page.
Aside from a few blurry photos in the advertisement, I never saw how good
this program actually was.

Since then, I have never seen this program or any like it again.  Are there
any PD programs that do this?  How difficult would it be to write one's own
handler to, for instance, read in an image file from disk and print it to
the printer using this method?  This is, in fact, my main interest; printing
out graphics files I have drawn with a paint program, downloaded, etc.  I
have experimented briefly with the ESC codes for my daisy wheel printer, and
have indeed managed to set the HMI and VMI to smaller values, but this reduces
my workspace on the page to about 2 square inches; in other words, I am
increasing resolution but decreasing overall space; the printer still thinks
that there are 80 characters per line, even though those 80 characters are
scrunched in about 2 inches, so I can't get more than 2 inches wide on the
page!

Any suggestions on writing/finding such a program would be greatly appreciated.

-- 
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