Star Micronics 8 Series manual Font height

Narrowcondensedfacesusedto be called“compressed”.They cram about fivecharactemin thespacewherethreeusuallygo-ideal for spreadsheets. An extended face, particularlyon a dot-matrixprinter, goes by several names:“expanded,““enlarged”or’’double-width’’printing.Nomatterwhat it’s called,extendedprintis widerthanit is high,andcan be fairlyeffective in page headings.

Italiccharacters(sometimescalled“oblique”)areslanted.Ordinaryupright charactersareoftencalled“reman”.YourStarLaserPrinter8 comeswitha built-inupright Couriertypeface.Moreover,from any of the Star Laser- Printer 8’s built-intypefacesyou can select a subset of upright symbols called Roman-8.

Afonf is a completeset of charactersin a pafiicularsizeandtypeface.In the worldoflaserprinters,thethreevariablesmentionedabove—weight,width and style— are a fewfontattributes(sometimescalled “font characteris- tics”). Let’s considerthree more attributes:font height,spacingand pitch.

Font height

Thebaselineistheinvisiblelineuponwhichcharactersof typesit. Sincethe firstletterblocksweremadeof leadalloy,thedistancefromonebaselineto the nextis called leading(pronounced“ledding”).Type itselfis measured fromthetopof an ascender(thepan extendingup in theb ork, forcxample) to the bottomof a descender(the down-strokeof they or q ).

Themeasurementsusedtodescribefontsarepointsandpicas (derivedfrom the marksand lettersin medievalchurchalmanacs).There are 12pointsto the pica, and almost exactly 6 picas (72 points) to the inch. Your Star LaserPrinter 8 quitehandilyprintstype from 6 to 36 pointsin size.

Laserprintersforcomputersmeasurefontheightin points.Onlaserprinters the “whitespace”aboveascendersand belowdescendersdependson how the line is defined, so the line correspondsto leading.This type you’re readinghas a fontheightof 12points,and is spaceda littleless than 5 lines per inch.

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