Unicode and Fonts
Page 194 100-88002 Rev B
Stroke-based characters
With stroke based characters, the points stored are along the center line. Less
than half the points are needed to render stroke based characters. This
improves character-generation performance and uses less space.
This type of character generation is fast and efficient, and is ideally suited for
Asian fonts.
Character Size
The character generation engine used in the Epic 880TM 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 880TM, 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 880TM will automatically select the appropriate character size
to support the legacy font and character scaling commands.
In the Epic 880TM, 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 880TM 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 880TM provides 3 basic predefined character sizes. The
smallest is a 10x24 dot-like13 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.
13 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.