slc@hoptoad.uucp (Steve Costa) (10/14/89)
I've received several queries about HP soft fonts, so I'll sum my replies
into one message.
The only soft fonts I know of so far are supplied by HP, at least until
font editors (such as the one I'm working on) are available.
I don't know how much software can make direct use of the fonts. Eric
Kennedy mentioned that the new release of WordPerfect does.
Use of soft fonts by packages that don't support them directly or by simply
printing text files would be tricky in the case of proportional fonts. The
right margin justification would usually be pretty ragged. It's possible to
write a routine that uses the soft font file structure to figure the width
of each character and print lines of equal width. HP has a technical
reference manual that describes the file structure.
I wrote a simple utility to download font files directly to the printer.
However, it can also be done from the CLI. Most of the necessary
information is in the soft font file itself, except for these 2 items:
specify font id: <escape>*c#D # = font id; any value 0 - 32767
specify temporary: <escape>*c4F
or permanent: <escape>*c5F
A program that uses DeskJet fonts should tack these escape sequences onto
the beginning of the download. You can also download a font file yourself
from the CLI:
echo >par: <specify font id sequence>
echo >par: <specify temp/perm>
copy to par: <font file name>
After being downloaded, the font must be selected in order to be used. In
addition to selecting by font characteristics, as described in the manual,
you can simply select a font by id #
echo >par: <esc>(#X # = font id