BBC BASIC Programmers' Reference

by Richard Russell, October 2015

The article Improving the print quality describes one way of improving the quality of hardcopy output from LBB. An alternative approach is to use a large (normally) invisible window, of a sufficient size to achieve the desired quality, and then to send it to the printer using the GUI print command. Here's an example, using a large invisible window to give 600-dpi equivalent quality (LBB only; it doesn't work properly in LB):

      PaperWidth = 7.0   ' Printable width in inches
      PaperHeight = 10.0 ' Printable height in inches
      DotsPerInch = 600  ' Equivalent DPI quality
 
      WindowWidth = PaperWidth * DotsPerInch
      WindowHeight = PaperHeight * DotsPerInch
      stylebits #preview, 0, _WS_VISIBLE, 0, 0
      open "Printer Preview" for graphics_nf_nsb as #preview
 
      title$ = "My centered page title"
      #preview "font Arial 0 200 underscore"
      #preview "stringwidth? title$ stringwidth"
      #preview "place ";(WindowWidth-stringwidth)/2;" ";500
      #preview "color blue"
      #preview "\"; title$
      #preview "color red; size 20"
      #preview "place ";WindowWidth/2;" ";WindowHeight/2
      #preview "down; circle ";WindowWidth/4
      #preview "print ";WindowWidth
      close #preview