Zebra Technologies TTP 7030 technical manual Font Loading, File Format

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Programming

Font Loading

Font Loading

The printer can store 8 fonts in its flash PROM. The memory available for fonts is printed on the self-test printout. The character size is fixed3, so you must load one font file for each character size you require. The fonts are given font numbers when they are loaded into the printer. The first font is assigned number 0 and the next font 1 etc. up to font 7. Parameter p14 “Font Selection” will determine what font to use when no font selection command has been received (see Default Parameter Settings on page 69).

You cannot erase a single font, but must erase font 4-7 with command <ESC>&D, or all eight fonts with <ESC>&C, then reload the fonts you wanted to keep.

Windows software for font generation and management is available on the Zebra web site. If you need to load fonts in a non-Windows environment, use the <ESC>&<NUL> command.

The time required for processing the font data that is loaded is typically 15–20 seconds per font, excluding transfer time. During this time, any data sent to the printer will be lost.

Note • The font processing ends with a reset. The presenter motor runs momentarily to indicate that the printer is ready to be used.

Caution • Loading to the flash PROM will erase the RAM completely since the RAM is used during the loading process. Any print data residing in RAM will thus be lost.

File Format

A font consists of a header describing the font, then data for every character in the font. The header has to be downloaded even if the font consists of a single character only. Below is a description of the font header.

1 byte	Reserved	Should always be 0 (zero)
1 byte	Reserved	Should always be 0 (zero)
1 byte	Char. width (X)	The number of bytes required for the width of one character,
		usually 2 or 3. Range 1 to 8.
1 byte	Character pitch	The maximum width of one character in the set. This value is
		used for tab position calculation. Range 1 to 255.
1 byte	Char. height (Y)	The maximum height of one character matrix measured in
		pixels. This is also the minimum line spacing for this character
		set.
27 byte	Font name	String of characters used to identify the character set.

This will be printed on status printouts. (E.g. Swiss 10 cpi.)

Char_matrix table: 256 records, each containing 3 bytes.

3 byte Char_width (pixels) + Char_Ystart(pixels) + Char_Yheight(pixels)

3. Multiple height, and width commands can be used on all fonts.

P1003636-002 TTP 7030™ Technical Manual 10/05/2009