Using Fonts

[PaulY]

I have been experimenting with sending Epson font codes using Tasword on my ZX Spectrum to the RetroPrinter with it set in the default Roman font. Elite 27, 77 and Sans Serif 27, 701, 1 create a change in font as the attached pdfs. Courier 27,107,2 and Prestige 27,107,3 have no impact.

Q1) I am not sure, if this is a viable way of the changing fonts the RetroPrinter uses, or whether you need to change the font settings on the RetroPrinter itself?

Q2) Is the 27,77 font printed actually Elite and is the 27, 701, 1 acually Sans Serif?

Q3) The 27,701, 1 San Serif font is appealing to me, as it has the look of something produced by an early dot matrix printer, but the comma is strange looking. It looks like a right angle. Is what that the comma should look like?

Note: The attached pdfs are not as clear as the originals because I needed to compress them to upload them here

Thanks

Paul

[RWAP]

OK we just need to clarify a few things:

a) "Elite" (ESC M or 27,77 command) does not change the font as such, it just selects 10.5 point, 12 cpi characters (and does not work in proportional mode).

b) ESC K (or 17,107) selects the different fonts - ensure it is passing the number 1, 2 or 3 and not the character "1" "2" or "3"

c) Check that the /root/config/charset is set to Epson-PC437-US

However, I am looking at my source font files and I guess the issue is that there is not too much difference (if anything between Roman and Courier / Prestige).

The problem is that I have had to design these fonts by hand so they are my take on these various fonts based on the small snippets which appear in the Epson programming reference manual. I have no sample printouts of the original to compare with, so am not sure what the comma for example should look like.

I welcome input on the font design - and can share the raw files for use with the Fony font editor if someone wants to improve them.

[PaulY]

Thanks for your help. For my purposes the standard Roman font works very well, particularly with Tasword's out of the box 64 characters wide screen view when using A4 paper and a left margin of 8. I probably won't use the narrower CPI often as, unless I have very wide margins on A4 (as attached), I will need to scroll the screen horizontally to see the characters that go beyond 64 when typing.

It's pretty amazing that I'm able to do pretty powerful wordprocessing on a tiny early 1980s Spectrum in the first place and use my modern HP wi-fi printer in the process.

Thank you again for creating the RetroPrinter.

Paul