One of the best features of MacGowan Consultants' Printer Control word processor is the ability to load alternate character sets (fonts). Computa-Text and Script are the first two of a set of new fonts supplied on tape from Dragonfire Services.

I reviewed Printer Control in the August '85 edition (and the disc version in the June '86 edition), but for those readers new to this product here is a brief overview:

Printer Control is a powerful wordprocessing package supplied on either disc or tape (the tape version will take advantage of the 64's extra memory and allow you to use the RS232 port for printing). Using a 42 column, 24 line screen the text is entered and edited using the usual soft of cursor-controlled screen editing commands, such as insert, delete, find and replace, as well as block move, copy and delete.

Printer Control is not a WYSIWYG (What-You-See-ls-What-You-Get) wordprocessor - all formatting (e.g. text centering, underlining, double width, etc.) is done when printing and shows up as control characters on the screen.

The major advantage of Printer Control over other wordprocessors is its ability to control and take advantage of the graphics capabilities of your printer. Each copy of Printer Control is customised for your type of printer (so state which type you have when ordering), almost every 8-bit graphics dot-matrix printer is supported (plus a few other daisy-wheel types); over 60 printers in total. Text can be printed in four sizes, with italics, underlining, proportional spacing, you name it...

In addition to all this, Printer Control is also a PMODE4 graphics editor. Pictures can be scrolled a single pixel at a time in all four directions, text can be added, and blocks of 8x8 pixels can be rotated through 90 degrees.

The disc version supports all the features of the original tape version (apart from the extra 32K of the Dragon 64), but also allows the keyboard repeat speed to be changed (a very useful feature), most of the useful DOS commands can also be accessed within the program (rename, kill, dskinit, etc). Cassette loading and saving is also supported.

Using the graphics mode of the printer means that just about any eight by eight character set can be loaded and used (using option 9 from the Printer Control main menu). Dragonfire Services have taken advantage of this to produce add-on fonts on tape. The first two are Computa-Text and Script, an example of both is shown below.

The Computa-Text font looks like the 'optical characters' used on the bottom line of cheque books - it is the standard 'computer style' font. The second font, Script, is to me the most impressive. It gives you a hand-written look with joined up lower case letters (the upper case is a bit blocky, but you can't have everything!). The character matrices have been very carefully designed so that no matter which two lowercase letters are next to each other they always join-up.

The output quality will depend to a large extent on your printer, but with a good Epson the Script style can be very impressive indeed. These fonts can be printed in any of the three available sizes and can be mixed in with the standard Printer Control font. However, you cannot have more than one add-on font loaded at a time.

At the very reasonable price of just £2 each, these fonts are a must for Printer Control users - just think of the invitation cards, leaflets, newsletters etc you could use these extra fonts with.

The Printer Control wordprocessor program is published by MacGowan Consultants, 6 Arnhem Drive, Caythorpe, Nr. Grantham, Lines, NG32 3DQ. It is available from Harris Micro Software, 49 Alexandra Road, Hounslow, Middlesex TW3 4HR. Prices start at £20 (for the disc version) but depend on your particular type of printer.