Patent Document ID: 4523294
Application ID: 06382630

Base Claim:
1. A method of operating a printwheel type letter quality printer for producing character spaced justified text with aid of a microprocessor comprising: providing a data base for said letter quality printer to said microprocessor including at least, an original pitch increment "P(O)", and positions at which margins are set on said letter quality printer, said microprocessor using said positions to determine total increments in a line of text "T"; serially receiving a string of characters for a line of text into an interface from a terminal; counting each character of said string of characters in counting means of said microprocessor as each said character enters said interface; recording in recording means of said microprocessor an increment position of delimiters "B" at spaces or hyphens as said string of characters are counted by said counting means; deleting said increment position from said recording means and substituting a new increment position for said delimiter "B" at each new space or hyphen as said string of characters is counted by said counting means; comparing in comparing means of said microprocessor number of said characters of said line of text received with said text "T" to determine if enough of said characters have been received to form an intermediate line of text for justification, said comparing being repeated after receipt of each said character by said comparing means; feeding said intermedite line of text up to a last of said delimiters "B" from said microprocessor to a random access memory for storage of said intermediate line of text when said intermediate line of text has been accumulated in said microprocessor; calculating from said original pitch increment "P(O)" in said microprocessor number of increments "R" required to complete a justified line of text from said last of said delimiters "B" after said storage of said intermediate line of text; first computing from said original pitch increment "P(0)" and increment "R" in said microprocessor a first pitch "P(1)" representing pitch to which said letter quality printer is set by said microprocessor for a first part of said justified line of text; second computing from said original pitch increment "P(0)" and increment "R" in said microprocessor a second pitch "P(2)" representing pitch to which said letter quality printer is set by said microprocesor for a second part of said justified line of text; activating said letter quality printer by said microprocessor to print said justified line of text from said random access memory when said first pitch "P(1)" and second pitch "P(2)" have been computed; and repeating said serially receiving, counting, recording, deleting, comparing, feeding, calculating, first computing, second computing and activating steps for each subsequent line of text.

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Claim 2:
2. The method of claim 1 wherein said first computing is switched with said second computing for said first pitch "P(1)" and said second pitch "P(2)", respectively, for each of said subsequent lines of text.