BBC BASIC Programmers' Reference

by Richard Russell, November 2009

If your printer has a draft quality setting (which may, for example, be faster and/or use less ink) you can select it as follows:

        PROCprintquality(-1) : REM Draft quality

Other print quality settings are as follows:

        PROCprintquality(-2) : REM Low quality
        PROCprintquality(-3) : REM Medium quality
        PROCprintquality(-4) : REM High quality

Here is the procedure itself:

        DEF PROCprintquality(qual%)
        LOCAL psd%, dm%
        DIM psd% LOCAL 83
        !psd% = 84
        psd%!16 = 1024
        SYS "PageSetupDlg", psd%
        SYS "GlobalLock", psd%!8 TO dm%
        dm%!40 = 1024
        dm%?58 = qual%
        dm%?59 = (qual% >> 8)
        SYS "ResetDC", @prthdc%, dm%
        SYS "GlobalUnlock", psd%!8
        SYS "GlobalFree", psd%!8
        SYS "GlobalFree", psd%!12
        ENDPROC