On Wed, Aug 12, 2026 at 1:10 PM Jerome Shidel via Freedos-devel <[email protected]> wrote: > > Actually, thinking about it a little. I would likely use an 8x16 > font. Then, you could supply a simple “standard” dos font on the > command line or have the program pull the font directly from video > memory at startup. > > Then, I would programmatically separate the font into two separate 8x8 > fonts. One consistent of the even lines in left to right order. And > another font of the odd lines in right to left order. > > Then, during simulated printing, the fake print head would print the > even lines, shift down 1 pixel and print backwards. Then, drop down > the remaining character bits and start the next line.
That's an interesting idea. It doesn't really fit into the original design, but I like it. I'm trying to start from the original Epson 9-pin dot matrix printer. I grew up with an MX-80 then an FX-80, so I'll always have fondness for the Epson printers. The Epson manual shows characters fit into a 6-unit by 9-unit grid. Although the Epson could print at "half-dot" locations, with the limitation that (at normal uni-directional speed) you couldn't have overlapping dots; that is: a dot printed in a "box" (within the 6x9 "boxes") couldn't overlap with a dot printed in a "half-box" location (i.e. "on the line" in the 6x9 grid). To make this easier to implement in graphics mode, I thought to use square pixels in "version 1." That means no "half-box" locations. Text will be lower resolution, but still recognizable for an on-screen representation. > > This could also be used to generate audio using the PC speaker in > order to “Simulate” the sounds of printing. > > Combined with a visual print head, scrolling fan fold paper, audio, > it would be kind of neat. I hadn't thought about adding a virtual print head, but that would be neat. I could probably implement that as a sprite. I'm definitely planning to do audio. I figure the sound of 2 pins should be the same sound of *any* 2 pins. That is, the sound of printing with pins 1 and 2 should make the same "noise" as printing with pins 1 and 8. Counting bits is easy (that will happen anyway as I "print" to the screen). I can generate 9 different tones through the monaural speaker, for how many pins are printing in any position. :-) _______________________________________________ Freedos-devel mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
