A font is a set of characters and symbols created with a distinct design. The distinct design is called a typeface. The typefaces you select add personality to a

document. Well-chosen typefaces make a document easier to read.

The printer has numerous resident fonts in PCL 5/PCL 6. See

Weight and Style

Typefaces are often available in different weights and styles. These variations modify the original typeface so you can, for example, emphasize important

words in text or highlight book titles. The different weights and styles are designed to complement the original typeface.

Weight refers to the thickness of the lines that form the characters. Thicker lines result in darker characters. Some words commonly used to describe the

weight of a typeface are bold, medium, light, black, and heavy.

Style refers to other typeface modifications, such as tilt or character width. Italic and oblique are styles where the characters are tilted. Narrow, condensed,

and extended are three common styles that modify the character widths.

Some fonts combine several weight and style modifications; for example, Helvetica BdOb. A group of several weight and style variations of a single typeface is

called a typeface family. Most typeface families have four variations: regular, italic (oblique), bold, and bold italic (bold oblique). Some families have more

variations, as the following illustration for the Helvetica typeface family shows:

Pitch and Point Size

The size of a font is specified as either a pitch or point size, depending on whether the font is fixed space or proportional.

In fixed space fonts, each character has the same width. Pitch is used to specify the size of fixed space fonts. It is a measure of the number of characters that

will print in one horizontal inch of type. For example, all 10-pitch fonts print 10 characters per inch (cpi) and all 12-pitch fonts print 12 cpi:

In proportional (or typographic) fonts, every character can have a different width. Since proportional fonts have characters with different widths, the font size is

specified in point size, not pitch. Point size refers to the height of the characters in the font. A point is defined as 1/72 inch. The characters in a font printed at

24 point will be twice as large as the characters in the same font printed at 12 point.

The following illustration shows samples of a font printed in different point sizes:

The point size of a font is defined as the distance from the top of the tallest character in the font to the bottom of the lowest character in the font. Due to the

definition of point size, different fonts printed at the same point size may appear quite different in size. This is because there are other font parameters that

Downloaded from ManualsPrinter.com Manuals

"Resident Fonts"

for a listing of all resident fonts.

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