Experimental page makeup of text with graphics on a raster printer

TLDR: An experimental character-Graphic art program is described that demonstrates the potential of the IBM 3800 for printing a restricted set of character-graphic art documents and permits line art to be included in formatted text documents.

Abstract: The economic advantages of printing internal-use documents on a raster printer have usually been limited to purely numeric and text documents. This paper describes an experimental character-graphic art program that demonstrates the potential of the IBM 3800 for printing a restricted set of character-graphic art documents. A special character set is outlined, as well as an algorithm that selects those characters from the set that best approximate any straight line. This character-graphic algorithm permits line art to be included in formatted text documents. There is no manual artwork or paste-up in the document output. The artwork for this paper has been reproduced from material printed by the technique discussed, although the body text has been reset from the 3800 output.