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

EN Introduction 11-1
11
Soft Font Creation
Introduction
A font that is downloaded (transferred) from a computer to
a printer is called a soft font. A PCL soft font contains a font
header and a set of character definitions. The font header
and character definitions contain all the information needed
to format a font for use in the HP LaserJet printers.
Every PCL font header begins with a font descriptor, which
identifies the basic characteristics common to all characters of
a font, such as font type, baseline position, character cell width
and height, character orientation, symbol set, etc.
Every PCL character definition contains a character descriptor
and a body of character data. Furthermore, the character
definition always consists of one or more character data blocks.
Each character data block begins with its own character data
block header.
The character descriptor is a block of data that identifies the
characteristics for a specific character, such as its position, and
the cursor position after printing. The character data which
follows defines the shape of the character.
This chapter describes the font header and character definition
formats for PCL Bitmap fonts, Intellifont scalable and TrueType
scalable fonts. By formatting a font consistent with the header
format requirements, a user may download this information
(the font) to the printer using the Font Header command and
the Character Descriptor/Data command. One additional
command, the Character Code command, required to identify
the ASCII character code assigned to each character, is also
described in this chapter.