Turn your dot-matrix printer into a plotter and produce 'super' graphics dumps with this unique package. Geoff Bains reports.

Another printer dump at this stage in the Beeb's development has to have something pretty special to commend it. True to form, Silicon Vision's dump is both unusual in its operation and quite unique in its resulting printouts. the only other product which can compete at all is Design Dynamics Mode-00 Dump (see Beebug Vol. 6 No. 2).

When you've created a 3D masterpiece with Silicon Vision Realtime Solids system (see the review in this issue) the last thing you want from a hard copy printout is the usual smudged, sketch of a dump from your trusty Epson. Of course, it would be nice to use a plotter but that's way beyond most people's budget. Super Dump effectively turns your ordinary dot-matrix printer into a plotter.

Like a plotter, it doesn't dump the screen image but instead uses the series of VDU commands (MOVE, DRAW, etc.) that go to make up the picture. The VDU commands are taken from a disc file and the software translates them into a high resolution image on paper. However, it won't print just one image line at a time like a plotter. It produces the image in horizontal sections like a 'normal' dump.

Not being tied to the screen means the resolution of the dump is not limited to the 640x256 which can be displayed on the Beeb, it isn't even limited to the 1280 x 1024 which the Beeb's screen co-ordinate system uses. In fact, the dump can be done in one of three resolutions - 640x256 (mode 0), 640x512 and a staggering 1920x1024. That's about 240 dots to the inch - almost laser printer resolution.

To produce this kind of resolution on paper, your printer must be up to it in the first place. Firstly, the printer must be Epson compatible and support a quadruple density graphics mode (which gives the 1920 dots across eight inch paper). However, the vast majority of printers can manage this. Certainly any dot-matrix printer bought today should cope. Secondly, a good ribbon is always helpful when producing high quality images.

The program is menu based; it allows the image to be scaled in either the X or Y directions and the graphics origin to be moved as well. It's not only the Realtime Solids package which will benefit from Super Dump. Any picture which can be drawn on the Beeb's screen can be printed. You simply insert a *SPOOL <filename> into the drawing program before the drawing starts and a *SPOOL after it finishes to create a file of VDU commands. Of course, the picture must be drawn without any text or breaks to scroll or change the screen. However, most picture drawing programs can at least be altered to produce a suitable file.

Dumping pictures from commercial software is more difficult as the *SPOOL commands cannot usually be inserted into the program. Dumping from screen dump files is out of the question. Nevertheless, within these limitations, Super Dump is a marvellous piece of software. At last you can produce graphics printouts which genuinely look like their screen equivalents.