New Printer Fonts in 4.2

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gordon
Posts: 358
Joined: Fri Apr 24, 2009 6:02 pm

New Printer Fonts in 4.2

Post by gordon »

We made some changes in the way that fixed width fonts are sized in an attempt to better match HP printers. This was also intended to get PREVIEW, PDF, NWP and HP to, as near as possible, produce the same results.

In the past we used both height and width to size fixed width fonts and they were stretched as needed in NWP. We decided to stop stretching fonts and not use height for sizing fixed width fonts. The rules we established were:
  • Proportional - use specified height to set font size - ignore any width specification
    Fixed Width - use specified width to set font size - ignore any height specification
Without this vertical stretching, some of the default fonts became shorter. Originally we had the following height settings:
  • NWP Letter Gothic and Courier New aspect ratio was 2.6
    HP Letter Gothic aspect ratio is 2.0
    HP Courier New aspect ratio is 1.66
So you can see right away that NWP had been significantly optimized. By "normalizing" NWP we took an appearance step backward. This prompted us to find some new fonts that matched HP font proportions but looked good.

We started comparing the effects of these changes on Courier and Letter Gothic fonts. It turned out that courier was the most affected and this is the default font ( used in most cases where LINE PRINTER is not installed ). We ended up embedding a rendition of both fonts in BR, but we use the Microsoft installed edition of Letter Gothic when it is available of the host machine.

To complicate matters further, some fonts looked much better printed than PREVIEWed because printing offers much finer resolution. So we reduce the bold aspect during PREVIEW just slightly.

We believe we have minimized the damages of these changes by insuring that Letter Gothic is available but we haven't made Letter Gothic the default font... yet. And it may be a setback for your customers if you don't switch to Letter Gothic for condensed reports.

For convenience, here are the printer statements we use in ADS to default printers to compressed mode using the Letter Gothic font:
  • printer NWP INIT "\E(s2b4102t17H\E&l66p7.8C"
    printer PCL INIT HP,"\E(s1b4102T\E&k2s2G\E&l66p7.8C" ! compressed
We might entertain a discussion of what would be the impact if we defaulted printed output to Letter Gothic instead of Courier New or Lineprinter.
Susan Smith
Posts: 717
Joined: Sun Aug 10, 2008 4:24 am
Location: Southern California

Post by Susan Smith »

Gordon, in what version of BR 4.2 did this start? I was just curious because I've been converting reports from BR 4.03jx PCL on a WinXP machine to BR 4.2g and BR 4.2ja NWP on a Win7 machine. I haven't been able to get Letter Gothic in small sizes to look identical and this might be why. It gives me a lot more explanation for the results I've been seeing (I think).

On the other hand, it's always possible that I'm just screwing up my reports in other ways ;)



-- Susan
gordon
Posts: 358
Joined: Fri Apr 24, 2009 6:02 pm

Post by gordon »

Instead of being concerned with when the transition took effect, let's focus on resolving the problem. We made that change several months ago.

Have you been able to produce Letter Gothic at all?
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