Personal Computer News


All The Text That's Fit To Output On A Spectrum

 
Published in Personal Computer News #074

All The Text That's Fit To Output On A Spectrum

This short Spectrum routine can be added to Tasword to give nearly A4-size sheets of text from an Alphacom printer.

The routine prints out the left-hand side of the complete text file, LPRINTing 20 times after 80 lines to separate the pages. The right-hand side is then printed out. After cutting roughly half-way through the spaces between pages, the left side of a page of text should be overlaid on to its corresponding right side and the text carefully lined up. Slice through the two, preferably using a sharp, single-edged razor blade and a steel rule. If this can be done with the printed side of the paper face-down, a nearly invisible join can be made. The two sides can then be joined with invisible sticky tape (on the back of the sheets) or glued directly on to an A4 backing sheet. The top and bottom of all the pages can be trimmed together to ensure a uniform size. The results are very reasonable if done neatly and are certainly good enough for your own use. The only drawback to the method is having to splice each page together so it is probably unsuitable if you do a lot of printing.

In the Tasword listing, insert "GOTO 8000" after the CLS statement at the beginning of line 200. This divers the print routine which is called from the normal Tasword menu presented after STOP (not the ZX print routine called from Extended mode). Then add the print routine listing.

8000>LET X=32000: LET Y=1: LET LINE=2: GO SUB 8100
8010 LET CHAR=0: LET LINE=1: LET A$="": FOR N=X TO X+A' LET A$=A$+CHR$
PEEK N: LET CHAR=CHAR+1: IF CHAR=32 THEN LPRINT A$' LET LINE=LINE+1:
LET A$="": LET CHAR=0: LET N=N+32
8015 IF LINE=81 THEN GO SUB 8100: LET LINE=1
8020 NEXT N: GO SUB 8150: GO SUB 8100: LET X=X:32
8050 IF Y=2 THEN RUN
8060 LET Y=2: GO TO 8010
8100 IF LINE>1 THEN FOR M=1 TO 20: LPRINT : NEXT M
8110 RETURN
8150 IF LINE>1 THEN FOR M=LINE TO 80: LPRINT : NEXT M
8155 RETURN
8200
8210
8220 REM   X = START ADDRESS
8230 REM       FOR TEXT
8240
8250 REM   Y = FLAG TO LIMIT TO
8260 REM       2 PASSES (LEFT &
8270 REM       RIGHT OF TEXT)
8280
8290 REM   A = LENGTH OF TEXT -
8300 REM       (APPARENTLY
8310 REM       TASWORD'S OWN
8320 REM       VARIABLE)

B. Cavers
London E12

B. Cavers