Fonts

To type out even the simplest of documents: plain text, requires a lot of information. Just looking at upper and lower case letters on a screen for a moment makes you realise that a significant amount of information is needed to describe their form. It would clearly be very wasteful if, for each letter or other character to be printed, the file had to contain a complete description of it. Instead each character is assigned a code (usually 8-bit ASCII) and only these codes are used in the file. The appearance of the complete character set is called a FONT and font descriptions are recorded separately. Fonts are given two part names reflecting their shape and size, for example:-

roman 10pt

is a standard roman character set sized at 10pt (1pt = .035cm).

There are two types of font:-

Hardware

fonts are an integral part of the printer. For example in a daisy-wheel printer the daisy wheel defines the font.

Software

fonts are downloaded into the printer as required, usually in the form of a bit map. For example laser printers have software fonts. Printers that have software fonts also have at least one hardware font so that they can print plain text without the need to download a font.