Even if you use text mode printer you will still be able to use the following features:

- Font selection (courier ...)
- Font style (bold, italic and underlined)
- Font size (characters per inch)
- Lines (vertical and horizontal) and rectangles
- Character set managing and charater value mapping
- Other: subscripts and superscripts, double wide, landscape format and interline spacing

Note that the set of available features depends on the printer (see features table in the documentation ).

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Supported printer command sets:

- Epson ESCP and ESCP2 or compatible
- HP-PCL5 or compatible
- HP-PCL 3 (known also as Laset Jet Plus Emulation)
- IBM Proprinter or compatible
- IBM PPDS
- Diablo
- Plain (no features)

... new command sets can be easily implemented

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This is a very simple example:

WindowsPrinter port=new WindowsPrinter("HP LaserJet 2100"); // name of printer in windows control panel

TextPrinter printer=PrinterFactory.getPrinter("HP-PCL"); // get printer supporting HP-PCL command set

// create printing job
JobProperties job= printer.getDefaultJobProperties();
job.landscape=true;
printer.startJob(port,job);

// print BOLD text
prop=printer.getDefaultTextProperties();
prop.bold=true;
printer.printString("This must be BOLD",prop);
printer.newLine();

// print line
printer.printHorizontalLine(5,0,80); // row 5, column 0 to 80

printer.endJob();