T480
Programmer’s Guide
T480 Unicode and Fonts
100-14362
Rev A
Page 201
also fixed pitch, however, Latin character in the font are basically ½ the width of the
typical Asian character.
Character Size
The character generation engine used in the T480 internally uses a standard point
based system to specify the character size. One point is 1/72 of an inch. Therefore a 72
point character would form a character suitable to generate one line per inch printing.
The typical application might refer to a 12 point character. This is the character height
and not the width. The character width typically varies on character by character bases;
for example, the lower case “i” is much narrower than the upper case “W”.
Font selection commands for selecting character sizes in legacy applications are also
supported. For printers such as the EPIC 3000 , two or three character sizes are
generally predefined with a dot matrix size of 10x24 or 13x24 dots, and this fixed size
may then be double or tripled to provide larger characters when needed. To supply
legacy support, the EPIC 3000 will automatically select the appropriate character size to
support the legacy font and character scaling commands.
In the EPIC 3000 , the horizontal and vertical point size may be set independently.
Typically this type of printer would print a tall, narrow, mono-spaced character. Tall
narrow mono-spaced character provides a very readable print with easy column
alignment while using less paper than standard type fonts. This type of font is
sometimes referred to as a condensed font.
Selecting Character Size
The EPIC 3000 provides two ways to specify character size. The legacy or classic font
selection method is based on dot matrix size. The second method is based on the
standard type points system. The advantage of the type point system is that the print
produced by the printer will match what is displayed by the host system, as both use the
same system for describing the characters produced.
Legacy or Classic Method
With the classic method, the application selects a character size and then sets the
character spacing by adding or removing dot spaces between the characters. Using the
scaled font, the EPIC 3000 provides 3 basic predefined character sizes. The smallest is
a 10x24 dot-like
19
font and is typically printed in pitches from 16 to 20 characters per
inch (CPI). The next larger font is 13 x 24 dot-like, and is typically printed in pitches from
14 to 16 CPI. The largest font is 14 x 24 dot-like font and is typically printed at pitches
from 10 to 14 CPI.
The EPIC 3000 always prints at 203 dots per inch (dpi) and always uses the scalable
font to form characters. The resulting characters are not necessarily exactly the dot size
19
Characters are dot-like because they are not guaranteed to be exactly at an exact dot
equivalent. They are spaced in a fixed character cell that provides equivalent spacing and
alignment as a fixed character size, however the actual character size is defined by the font
designer.
