HP 5961-0509 manual Soft Font Creation

11 Soft Font Creation

Introduction

A font that is downloaded (transferred) from a computer to a printer is called a soft font. A PCL soft font contains a font header and a set of character definitions. The font header and character definitions contain all the information needed to format a font for use in the HP LaserJet printers.

Every PCL font header begins with a font descriptor, which identifies the basic characteristics common to all characters of a font, such as font type, baseline position, character cell width and height, character orientation, symbol set, etc.

Every PCL character definition contains a character descriptor and a body of character data. Furthermore, the character definition always consists of one or more character data blocks. Each character data block begins with its own character data block header.

The character descriptor is a block of data that identifies the characteristics for a specific character, such as its position, and the cursor position after printing. The character data which follows defines the shape of the character.

This chapter describes the font header and character definition formats for PCL Bitmap fonts, Intellifont scalable and TrueType scalable fonts. By formatting a font consistent with the header format requirements, a user may download this information (the font) to the printer using the Font Header command and the Character Descriptor/Data command. One additional command, the Character Code command, required to identify the ASCII character code assigned to each character, is also described in this chapter.

EN Introduction 11-1