HP PCL/PJL reference (PCL 5 Printer Language) - Technical Reference Manual Part II

23-30 The Character Group EN
You can express the parameters in measured units as rise and run, or
using the trigonometric functions cosine and sine according to the
following relationship.
Where: run and rise = number of measured units
θ = the angle measured in degrees
sin
θ /cos θ = rise/run
θ = tan
–1
(rise/run)
and
tan
θ = sin θ /cos θ
Note that the run and rise determine the slope or angle of an
imaginary line under the base of each character in the label. Refer to
the following illustration.
Figure 23-15Character Slope Rise and Run
When plotting in horizontal mode (you have not used the DV
command), the run and rise appear to determine the slope of the
entire label. However, if you have used the Define Variable Text Path
(DV) command to label in a vertical path, the label appears to slant in
the opposite direction, even though the base of each letter is plotted
on the same slope. The following illustration compares how labels
plotted with the same run and rise parameters appear with horizontal
(DV0) and vertical (DV1) text paths.