HP Pcl 5 Manual

ENIntroduction  7-1
7
Fonts
Introduction   
A font is a group of symbols that have similar characteristics. A 
font is described by its symbol set, spacing, height, pitch, 
style, stroke weight, typeface and orientation.
A typical document is printed using several fonts. A large font 
may be used for the title and chapter headings of a document, a 
standard size font may be used for the body of the document, 
and key words or phrases may be highlighted, using a bold or 
italic font.
For example, this...

7-2   FontsEN
A font must be selected for printing by the user. One font is selected 
at a time. It is selected by identifying the specific characteristics of the 
font. Font selection commands identify font characteristics to the 
printer (refer to Summary of Font Selection by Characteristic for 
detailed font selection information).      
PCL 5 printers feature scalable fonts. With the addition of this feature, 
the printer has two font formats available: bitmap and scalable. A 
bitmap font is...

ENSymbol Set 7-3
Symbol Set   
Symbol set identifies the specific collection of symbols provided by a 
font. Each symbol set is defined with a specific application in mind. 
For example, the legal and math symbol sets were designed to 
support legal and scientific applications. The following figure shows 
two common symbol sets, PC-8 and Roman-8. The PC-8 symbol set 
contains some special symbols and line draw characters not included 
in the Roman-8 symbol set, while the Roman-8 set contains 
European...

7-4   FontsEN
Spacing      
Another characteristic that differentiates fonts is spacing. Fonts have 
either fixed or proportional spacing. Fixed-spaced fonts (Figure 7-3) 
are those in which the inter-character spacing is constant. 
Proportionally-spaced fonts (Figure 7-4) are those in which the 
inter-character spacing varies with the natural shape of a character.
Figure 7-3 Fixed Spacing
Figure 7-4 Proportional Spacing 

ENPitch 7-5
Pitch     
Pitch describes the number of characters printed in a horizontal inch. 
Pitch only applies to fixed-spaced fonts, since the number of 
characters per inch varies for proportional fonts.
Figure 7-5 Pitch
Height      
The height of a font is the measurement of the body of the type in 
PCL points. A PCL point is 1/72 inch in bitmap fonts, and 
approximately 1/72 inch in scalable fonts. The body of the type is 
slightly larger than the distance from the bottom of a descender to the...

7-6   FontsEN
Style          
Style is defined by three characteristics: posture (upright, italic), width 
(condensed, normal, expanded, etc.), and structure (solid, outline, 
shadow etc.). Examples of upright and italic styles are shown.
Figure 7-7 Style
Stroke Weight      
Stroke weight describes the thickness of the strokes that compose 
characters. Examples of medium and bold stroke weights are shown 
in the figure below.
Figure 7-8 Stroke Weight 

ENTypeface Family 7-7
Typeface Family    
Typeface identifies the design of the symbols of the font. Each 
typeface family has unique and distinguishing design characteristics. 
The following example shows typefaces from various typeface 
families.
Figure 7-9 Typeface 

7-8   FontsEN
Orientation      
Orientation defines the position of the logical page with respect to the 
physical page as shown in Figure 7-10.
Figure 7-10  Orientation  
The HP LaserJet IID, IIP, 2000, and all PCL 5 LaserJet printers 
automatically rotate fonts to the current orientation (all fonts are 
available in all four orientations). (Earlier printers required fonts in 
the orientation which matched the orientation of the page. Thus, 
orientation is not as important as it once was.)    
The...

ENBitmap Fonts and Scalable Typefaces 7-9
Bitmap Fonts and Scalable Typefaces       
There are two basic formats of fonts used by HP PCL 5 printers: 
bitmap (Figure 7-11) and scalable (Figure 7-12). Earlier HP LaserJet 
printers supported only bitmap fonts. Bitmap fonts have a fixed 
bit-pattern for each character. The size of the character is fixed, 
depending on the bit-pattern. Scalable typefaces, on the other hand, 
provide an “outline” for the characters. This “outline” can be scaled by 
the PCL 5...

7-10   FontsEN
Figure 7-11  Bitmap Character
Figure 7-12  Scalable Character