Star Micronics 4 manual Font height

Narrow condensedfacesusedto be called“compnxsed”.They cram about fivecharactemin thespacewherethreeusuallygo--ideal for spreadsheets. An extended face, particularlyon a dot-matrixprinter, goes by several names:“expanded,““enlarged”or’’double-width’’printing.Nomatterwhat it’s called,extendedprintis widerthanit is high,andcanbe fairlyeffective in page headings.

Italiccharacters(sometimescalled“oblique”)are slanted.Ordinaryupright charactemm oftencalled“reman”.YourStarLaserPrinter4 comeswith a built-inupright Couriertypeface.Moreover,from any of the Star Laser- Printer 4’s built-intypefacesyou can select a subset of upright symbols calledRoman-8.

Afont is a completeset of charactersin a particularsizeandtypeface.In the worldof laserprintm, thethreevariablesmentionedabove—weight,width and style— are a few~ontattributes(sometimescalled “font characteris- tics”). Let’s considerthree more attributes:font height,spacingand pitch.

3.1.2 Font height

The bizselineis theinvisiblelineuponwhichcharactemof typesit. Sincethe firstletterblocksweremadeof lead alloy,the distancefromonebaselineto the next is called Zeuding(pronounced“ledding”).Type itself is measured fromthetopof an uscender(thepartextendingup intheb ork, forexample) to the bottomof a descender(the down-strokeof the y or q ).

The measurementsusedto describefontsarepoint,sandpicus(derivedfrom the marks and lettersin medievalchurchalmanacs).There are 12pointsto the pica,,and almostexactly6 picas (72 points)to the inch.

Laserprintersforcomputemmeasure~ontheightinpoints.Onlaserprinte~ the “whitespace”aboveascendersand belowdescendemdependson how the line is defined, so the line eonesponds to leading.This type you’re readinghas a fontheightof 12points,andis spaceda littleless than 5 lines per inch.

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