Star Micronics 4111 manual Font height

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Narrow condensed faces used to be called “compressed”. They cram about five characters in the space where three usually go — ideal for spreadsheets. An extended face, particularly on a dot-matrix printer, goes by several names: “expanded“, “enlarged” or “double-width” printing. No matter what it’s called, extended print is wider than it is high, and can be fairly effective in page headings.

Italic characters (sometimes called “oblique”) are slanted. Ordinary upright characters are often called “roman”. Your Star LaserPrinter 4111comes with abuilt-in uprightCouriertypeface. Moreover,fromany ofthe StarLaserPrinter 4111’sbuilt-in typefaces you can select a subset of upright symbols called Roman-8.

A,font is a complete set of characters in a particular size and typeface. In the world of laser printers, the three variables mentioned above — weight, width and style — are a few~ont attributes (sometimes called “font charac- teristics”). Let’s consider three more attributes: font height, spacing and pitch.

3.1.2 Font height

The baseline is the invisible line upon which characters of type sit. Since the first letter blocks were made of lead alloy, the distance from one baseline to the next is called leading (pronounced “ledding”). Type itself is measured from the top of an uscender (the part extending up in the b or k, for example) to the bottom of a descender (the down-stroke of they or q).

The measurements used to describe fonts are points and picas (derived from the marks and letters in medieval church almanacs). There are 12 points to the pica, and almost exactly 6 picas (72 points) to the inch.

Laser printers for computers measure~ont height in points. On laser printers the “white space” above ascenders and below descenders depends on how the line is defined, so the line corresponds to leading. This type you’re reading has a font height of 12 points, and is spaced a little less than 5 lines per inch.

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