Jim Hall wrote:
>> Ultimately, a virtual dot matrix printer should support "half dot"
>> print head vertical movement too, so you can print at very high
>> resolution.
[..]

On Thu, Aug 13, 2026 at 10:13 AM Alain Mouette wrote:
>
> I've been trying to figure out a good method to do that on screen.
>
> Some Dot-matrix  had a possibility (mine had) to advance the paper
> by a half dot and pront overlapping dots...  But I believe it will
> hava a poor aspect on screen as dots really were intended to overlap
> and it would me messy on screen

I think I know of a way to do it if I'm writing to a PGM file. But it
doesn't extend to DOS graphics.


If it's PGM: Each "dot" actually takes up a 3x3 grid, where the center
is basically black and you have a partial gray value for each of the 8
boxes around it. This is easy if you're doing it in PGM, because if
"0" is black and "15" is pure white, then different values of "gray"
are just division.

Each "dot" 3x3 grid actually overlaps the previous "dot" 3x3 grid.
Let's say one "dot" is this 3x3 grid, where "1" is the center and "o"
are the 8 squares around it:

ooo
o1o
ooo

..then the adjacent "dot" is another 3x3 grid that overlaps the last
column of the previous "dot." Let's show the overlapping dots as "O":

ooOoo
o1O2o
ooOoo

..and so on for other dots. If I'm just printing out two rows of two dots:

ooOoo
o1O2o
OOOO
o3O4o
ooOoo


HOWEVER, this is probably not possible in SVGA graphics, just based on
resolution. If I assume a "page" is 510 "dots" wide (8.5 inches) and
660 "dots" long (11 inches), that's easy to do in SVGA (XRES
1024x768). I'll run out of room if I want to display a single page
WITH THAT METHOD in portrait view in 1024x768.

So I think the easiest way to do this is one "dot" per pixel, and
square pixels. Then a page is 510x660 pixels, which easily fits on
1024x768.


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