Star Micronics 8 Series manual Bit-mappedfonts

HOW THE STAR

LASEI?PRINTER 8 STORES FONTS

Bit-mappedfonts

StarMicmnicshasearneda reputationfor attractive,well-designedfontson its printers,and this laser printercontinuesthe tradition.

The Star LaserPrinter 8 uses bit-mappedfonts.Each characteris madeup of a patternor “map”of dots,just like characterson a dot-matrixprinteror on your computerscreen. Resolutionmakes the difference:to make each characterthe Star LaserPrinter8 uses ten or twentytimesas many dots as a dot-matrixprinteror computerscreendoes.

Everysizeofprintyouwant,pluseveryitalicorboldfaceversion,hasitsown bit map and is normallyconsidereda separatefont. It takes a gooddeal of printermemoryto hold all the fontsyoumightwant at any givenmoment.

Star LaserPrinter8 fonts can be grouped into three categories:internal, cartridge,and dowrdoadablefonts.

Internalfonts

The Star LaserPrinter8 has four built-in internalfonts that reside perma- nently in its read-onlymemory (ROM).That’s why these are sometimes called“residentfonts”:

Courier	Prestige Elite
Tms Romn	Line Printer

Courieris the face usedon the mostcommonelectrictypewriters. Neither Couriernor PrestigeElite,anothertypewriterface,areprintedwithpropor- tionalspacing.Tms Romnhowever,is alwaysspacedproportionally.Tms Romnis probablythemostreadableandmostpopularcommercialtypeset- tingface.TheLinePrinterfont,desi~ed originallyformainframecomput- ers, is smallanddesignedto pack a lot of charactersintoeveryinchof print (greatfor spreadsheets).

With these most frequentlyused fonts in ROM, a page can be assembled muchfasterthanifthefontshadtobeloadedintotheprinterforeachprinting job.

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