Macintosh: Menu Manager and Printer Font Handling



Technically, is there any difference between the ImageWriter, ImageWriter LQ,
and LaserWriter IISC fonts and the normal fonts (FONT, FOND, and NFNT
resources)? Or, is the Font Manager just looking for the 2x, 3x, or 4x fonts
and using them?

If it is the latter, how does the Menu Manager know the right font sizes? Is it
considering what printer driver is used? If an ImageWriter LQ is connected and
the same fonts are installed, it had to show different font sizes installed
than if an ImageWriter II is installed! Is the Menu Manager just showing the
right fonts for the screen and doesn't care about the output?

The fonts that come with the ImageWriter LQ and LaserWriter IISC are bitmap
fonts, just like the fonts that come with the System Software. The only
difference is that they come in larger sizes. The Menu Manager and the Font
Manager do not behave any differently than normal.

The printer drivers, however, do have an affect on how the fonts are used
during the printing process.

For example, if you have a document comprised entirely of Geneva 12, and you
are printing to an ImageWriter LQ, the ImageWriter LQ driver attempts to locate
Geneva 36 and scale it down to the same size as Geneva 12.

This is done to make the printouts look better. Doing the same thing with the
LaserWriter IISC would result in the LaserWriter IISC driver looking for Geneva
48. The ImageWriter II driver would look for Geneva 24.

This is the only difference in the way fonts are handled in these systems.


Published Date: Feb 18, 2012