[ale42]

Matrix printers can actually do quite a lot... depending on the models, you can change fonts, use bold, underline, sometimes italic, double-width and double-height characters and even graphics (although often are relatively low resolutions like 90 or 180 DPI).

One funny thing I did once for a escape-room-like game, was a box with only a parallel printer connector on it. When connected to the printer, it was parasite-powered from one of the control lines of the parallel port (it was just a tiny PIC microcontroller drawing a few hundred µA) and was sending a hint to the printer.

[bitwize]

Back in the day, one of the first desktop publishing programs out there was called Fancy Font by SoftCraft. It was a CP/M and later DOS program, so not a WYSIWYG page layout tool like PageMaker. Instead it used text documents formatted with a simple markup language.

It originally worked by taking advantage of the high-resolution graphics mode present in Epson dot-matrix printers, which were capable of platen microadjustments as small as 1/3 the pitch between the pins in the print head, allowing for 3 times the vertical resolution the head alone could give. Fancy Font rendered the text on the computer and sent it as graphics in this special high-resolution mode, yielding results that were as close as you could get to typeset for home equipment in the early 1980s.

Later versions of Fancy Font had drivers for early laser printers like the OG HP LaserJet. But when the Mac came out... the writing was on the wall for such a system.

[schlauerfox]

My dad had a 4 color dot matrix printer in the 90s. Printing the pharaoh head from deluxe paint II took FOREVER but actually looked pretty. The paper was really warped after though. Still have it, but no idea where 4 color ribbons would be sourced.

[sitkack]

You could probably make your own multicolor ribbon.

[smartmic]

I remember printing huge banners in landscape mode on those endless paper rolls, basically ASCII art stuff which commands like figlet would produce today on a terminal (maybe it still supports printers as output?)

[aschmelyun]

I’ve been wanting to explore more with this design-wise. There’s literally dozens of pages in the manual regarding font sizing, emphasis, italics, sub and superscripts, etc.

Maybe for version 2.0!

[layer8]

It would be fun to have a terminal that understands ESC/P, supporting different fonts and CPI and the like.

[seanw444]

That's pretty cool actually.