Symbol Collections - Brother HL-Series Technical Reference Manual

Revision C 16/01/96

Symbol collections

The symbol collections contain many symbols and a symbol set is made from symbol collections by selecting the
required symbols for unbound fonts. As symbol collections have more symbols than symbol sets, unbound fonts
can have more symbols than bound fonts. Due to the compatibility between symbol sets and symbol collections,
the printer searches the designated MSL or Unicode number by using a symbol set mapping table.
Type of character spacing
Character spacing is either fixed (monospacing), in which every printed character is allocated the same amount of
space on the line, or proportional, where characters are spaced according to their shape and size. For any serious
typographic work proportional spacing is essential since fixed spacing is unattractive and hard to read. In general
monospacing is used with bitmap fonts, and proportional spacing is used with scalable fonts. However,
proportionally spaced bitmap fonts do exist.
Pitch
Pitch is the number of characters that are printed per inch and therefore only applies to monospaced fonts. If you
make a pitch selection while using a proportionally spaced font the command will have no immediate effect.
However, the new pitch will be stored as part of the primary (or secondary) font designation and applied the next
time a monospaced font is selected as the primary (or secondary) font.
The printer's in-built bitmap fonts all have a pitch of either 10, 12 or 16.66 characters per inch.
Height
Height refers to the height in points (1/72") of unaccented capital letters in a font. This is the generally accepted
method of defining the height of a font's characters. Scaled fonts can be specified to an accuracy of 0.25 points.
Style
A font's style is defined by its posture (upright or italic), width (condensed, normal or expanded) and structure
(solid, outline or shadow). Upright and italic bitmap fonts and scalable typefaces are available in the printer's
ROM. However, these are all normal and solid fonts. To print using any of the other styles (for example, using
Condensed Helsinki, or Outline Tennessee) you would have to download the requisite font or install a font
card/cartridge containing it.
Stroke weight
Stroke weight refers to the thickness of the lines which make up the printed characters. Characters of normal line
thickness are called medium. Thicker lines are referred to as bold or black and thinner lines as light or thin. You
can specify 15 different stroke weights - 0 denotes medium weight, negative values signify thinner strokes, and
positive values signify bolder (thicker) strokes. If you have the bold font available that matches your font
designation, a stroke weight selection of 1 to 7 will produce bold text. Likewise, for light or thin text you would
need to make the requisite light or thin font available for the stroke weight selection to have any effect.
Typeface
Typeface refers to the designed style of the characters. Commonly known typefaces include Times, Helvetica,
Univers and Palatino. The printer has its own resident typefaces. When selecting a particular typeface ensure that
it meets all your other specified criteria, otherwise the printer will substitute a font of a different typeface that can
satisfy the other, higher priority criteria, such as style and stroke weight.
Chapter 2 "PCL" - 35