14th January 1984
Microprint Moves Matter
The text printing capabilities of the Spectrum can also be extended with Microprint 42/51 this time in the direction of packing more text onto the screen or using different typefaces for emphasis.
With Microprint you can get 42 or 51 characters to a line as well as the usual 32, giving up to 1,224 characters on the full 24-line screen.
You can use it from Basic by setting up variables for the text to be printed, the print position, the colour and other attributes, and printing the text by a USR command, or from machine code, by setting up the details in specific addresses and calling the Microprint code directly.
Microprint provides a machine code subtrouine to use in your own Basic or machine code programming, and the instruction sheet gives details of how to use it. However, you need to be proficient at programming to make real use of it.
You can get effective displays with Microprint by mixing the three text sizes, but although it allows you to use all 24 lines of the screen with the two extra character sizes, you cannot use the bottom two lines of the screen for normal size characters. And it does not let you LPRINT the extra Microprint 42/51 is a useful machine code subroutine you can use from your own programs to produce text displays. The three different text sizes available with Microprint allow you to fit more text onto the screen and to use different typefaces.
Ratings
Features 3/5
Documentation 3/5
Performance 3/5
Usability 3/5
Reliability 4/5
Overall Value 3/5
