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
- 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
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