Small Screen, Large Printer

What effect would a 22 line screen have on an 80 column printer? Example: VIC (22 lines screen text) VIC 1515 Printer (80 columns).

T. W. Logan

Lines, columns, characters – it takes a bit of getting used to. For example, line three is the entire third line of text down from the top of the TV screen. If you had two blank lines and then the words "This is a line." on your screen, that complete message would be called line three. Columns are just the opposite: the character in the fourth column (of line three) would be the "s" in the word this.

The printer is an independent peripheral. It won't be reading the text off the screen. Instead, it prints out what it finds in the computer's RAM memory (when a program tells it to), and it doesn't need to conform to any limitations of screen size. Printer columns depend on the maximum size allowed by the printer's manufacturer. Printer lines can continue until you run out of paper. There is no limit.