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