Either one of these methods returns the printer to what are called its defaults, which are the standard settings that are in effect every time you turn the printer on. The two effects of resetting the printer that you should be concerned with are: it returns printing to single-strike pica, thus canceling any other pitches or enhancements you may have turned on and the current position of the print head becomes the top-of-page semng. Some of our demonstration programs end with a reset code so com- mands from one program will not interfere with commands in the next one.
After you run a program with a reset code in it, remember to change the top-of-page setting before you begin printing full pages. Pitch Comparison Now that you have used three short programs to produce samples of the three main pitches, you can choose the pitch that you prefer or the one that best fits a particular printing job. Most people use either pica or elite for printing text and condensed for spreadsheets or other applica- tions in which it is important to get the maximum number of characters on a line. Near Letter Quality Mode The examples so far in this chapter are in draft mode. You can see the NLQ mode with the following program for Commodore BASIC :
10 OPEN4,4 20 PRINT#4,CHR$(27)CHR$(120)CHR$(1); 30 FORX=65TO105 35 PRINT#4,CHR$(X); 40 NEXT X:PRINT#4 The MBASIC version of this same program: 50 CLOSE4 10 LPRINT CHR$(27)"x"CHR$(1); 20FORX=65TO105 30 LPRINT CHR$(X); 40 NEXT X: LPRINT Result: ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ[\]~_.abcdefghi Note you use a lowercase x, not a capital X, in line 10 . Because of the high resolution of the NLQ mode, it prints only in pica, not in elite or condensed. 62