Epson 100-88002 Stroke-based characters, Selecting Character Size, Legacy or Classic Method

Unicode and Fonts

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-like13font 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.

13Characters 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.

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