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05-fonts Page 3 Thursday, April 1, 1999 11:08 AM
Font Types
The following types of fonts are available for formatting
your document.
Bitmapped Fonts
Bitmapped fonts use a pattern of black and white
squares (bits) to describe a character. The printer can
print a bitmapped character directly without any
processing, and thus can often print more quickly than
outline fonts.
A bitmap character can be rotated 90 degrees, but
cannot be scaled up without serious distortion.
Bitmapped fonts are also called fixed-size fonts. They
demand a large amount of memory on a printer,
because different sizes of each font must be stored in
printer memory. These limitations led to the
development of outline fonts.
Outline Fonts
Outline fonts use mathematical descriptions of
characters instead of bitmaps. For example, the letter
"b" is stored as a computer program describing straight
lines and arcs, rather than as a series of bits. Outline
fonts are also known as a scalable fonts, since just one
representation of a font can be stored in the printer and
used to create many sizes.
Outline fonts can be scaled, distorted, rotated, and filled
with a wide range of tones, patterns, and colors. The
font is then rasterized, i.e., translated to bitmap, before it
is output on a display or printed.
TrueType Screen Fonts
A screen font is a set of characters designed for your
computer screen. Using screen fonts that match your
printer fonts enables what-you-see-is-what-you-get
(WYSIWYG) formatting. Your onscreen document is
then an accurate display of the page you will print.
Using Fonts to Format Your Document
5–3
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