5.1.19. Pitch ; 5.1.20. Height ; 5.1.21. Style - Page 60

2001/10/02

CHAPTER 2 "PCL" - 40 

5.1.16.  Symbol set 

The symbol set is the list of symbols that constitute a particular font. Normally, symbol sets contain lower and 
upper case letters, numbers, punctuation marks and a selection of other commonly used symbols. Some symbol 
sets are designed for specific needs, for example, for generating text with mathematical expressions. The symbol 
set has the highest priority of all the characteristics you specify when you designate the font you require. If the 
symbol set you choose is available, but not in conjunction with any of the other characteristics you specify, the 
printer will satisfy your symbol set request at the expense of the rest of your designation and the text printed out 
may well look completely different from what you expected to see. 

5.1.17.  Symbol collections 

The symbol collections contain many symbols and a symbol set is made from symbol collections by selecting the 
required symbols for unbound fonts. As symbol collections have more symbols than symbol sets,  unbound 
fonts can have more symbols than bound fonts.  Due to the compatibility between symbol sets and symbol 
collections,  the printer searches the designated MSL or Unicode number by using a symbol set mapping table.  

5.1.18.  Type of character spacing 

Character spacing is either fixed (monospacing), in which every printed character is allocated the same amount of 
space on the line, or proportional, where characters are spaced according to their shape and size. For any serious 
typographic work proportional spacing is essential since fixed spacing is unattractive and hard to read. In 
general, monospacing is used with bitmap fonts and proportional spacing is used with scalable fonts. However, 
proportionally spaced bitmap fonts do exist. 

5.1.19.  Pitch 

Pitch is the number of characters that are printed per inch and therefore only applies to monospaced fonts. If you 
make a pitch selection while using a proportionally spaced font the command will have no immediate effect. 
However, the new pitch will be stored as part of the primary (or secondary) font designation and applied the next 
time a monospaced font is selected as the primary (or secondary) font. 

The printer’s in-built bitmap fonts all have a pitch of either 10, 12 or 16.66 characters per inch. 

5.1.20.  Height 

Height refers to the height in points (1/72") of unaccented capital letters in a font. This is the generally accepted 
method of defining the height of a font’s characters. Scaled fonts can be specified to an accuracy of 0.25 points.  

5.1.21.  Style 

A font’s style  is defined by its posture (upright or italic), width (condensed, normal or expanded) and structure 
(solid, outline or shadow). Upright and italic bitmap fonts and scalable typefaces are available in the printer’s 
ROM. However, these are all normal and solid fonts. To print using any of the other styles (for example, using 
Condensed Helsinki or Outline Tennessee) you would have to download the requisite font or install a font 
card/cartridge containing it. 

5.1.22.  Stroke weight 

Stroke weight refers to the thickness of the lines which make up the printed characters. Characters of normal line 
thickness are called medium. Thicker lines are referred to as bold or black and thinner lines as light or thin. You 
can specify 15 different stroke weights - 0 denotes medium weight, negative values signify thinner strokes, and 
positive values signify bolder (thicker) strokes. If you have the bold font available that matches your font 
designation, a stroke weight selection of 1 to 7 will produce bold text. Likewise, for light or thin text you would 
need to make the requisite light or thin font available for the stroke weight selection to have any effect. 

5.1.23.  Typeface 

Typeface refers to the designed style of the characters. Commonly known typefaces include Times, Helvetica, 
Univers and Palatino. The printer has its own resident typefaces. When selecting a particular typeface ensure 
that it meets all your other specified criteria, otherwise the printer will substitute a font of a different typeface that 
can satisfy the other, higher priority criteria, such as style and stroke weight.