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