These increments reflect the history of twentieth century printing. Pitch,
referringto the number of characters printed in eachhorizontal inch,derives
from how typewriters space their characters. Lines and columns were first
used by earlier computer printers (on which they are called horizontaland
verticalmotion indexes). You already know about the Star LaserPrinter4111
beingable toprint300dots to theinch.And theunit bywhichtypesetters have
measured text for centuries isthe point, about l/72nd of an inch.
Onehint aboutmoving theprint position:youcan confuse yourselfif youuse
more than one or two different units during the same session. So decide
beforehand how accurately youneed to move the print position (not forget-
tingany graphics you want to include). Then stickto the unit(s) youchoose.
The commands thatmove the print position in all these ways are described
in chapter 4.
2.4 CONTROLLING THE PRINTING
The CHARACTER parameter defines font attributes and setup values (if
any) for the Star LaserPrinter 4111.
Afont attributesor characteristics determine what that font will look like
when itis printed. The next chapter, “Fonts”, explores the details of all font
attributesin moredetail.But let’shave aquick overviewnow,because you’ll
meet these terms on the control panel programmenu.
Font attributes: apreview
Orientation (portraitor landscape as described earlier) is usually thought of
as one attribute of afont; it’s not really apage formatting issue. Besides
orientation, the fonts with which you print have these attributes:
Symbol seris sometimes called “character set” —which can be confusing,
since somepeople say “character set” when they mean afont. Symbol sets
are subgroups of afont’s symbols that are most appropriate for particular
countries, such as the UK (f), France (a), Latin America (ii)or Japan (Y).
Spacing andpitch are linked. Characters can be spaced on the line propor-
tionally,so anarrow letter such as itakes less roomthan awide letter like W,
Orcharacters can be spaced all the same width: twelvecharacters to the inch
isthe monospaced spacing called 12 pitch.
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