Using Fonts Supplied with Windows 2000
Incorporated into Windows 2000 is a scalable font technology called OpenType. OpenType is a superset of TrueType, a technology that was introduced with Microsoft Windows 95 and included with Microsoft Windows NT 4, the immediate predecessor of Windows 2000. You can think of OpenType as a merger of TrueType technology with Adobe Systems' Type 1 technology. OpenType handles both TrueType and Type 1 fonts (fonts designed for use with PostScript output devices) from a unified registry. Among other things, this means that you can install a set of Type 1 fonts in Windows 2000 and then manage and use your Type 1 fonts the same way you manage and use the rest of your font library.
OpenType fonts, like TrueType fonts, are scalable, which means they can be used effectively in all point sizes and on all output devices. Windows 2000 comes preinstalled with several OpenType font families, including Arial, Comic Sans MS, Courier New, Georgia, Impact, Lucida Console, Lucida Sans Unicode, Microsoft Sans Serif, Palatino Linotype, Symbol, Tahoma, Times New Roman, Trebuchet MS, Verdana, Webdings, and Wingdings.
In addition to these, the operating system also provides certain vector and raster fonts for the sake of compatibility with older applications that require them. Vector fonts, also known as stroke fonts, are low-quality characters, like those you would draw with a pen, and are used primarily with plotters (special-purpose printers used for drawing charts or line graphs with pens, for example, weather maps). Raster fonts, also known as bitmap fonts, are stored as images in specific point sizes (as opposed to scalable outlines) and hence offer good quality, but only at the particular point sizes at which they were created.
Along with the fonts supplied by Windows 2000, you'll probably find additional fonts on your system, courtesy of particular programs or printers that you have installed. All of the major office suites, for example, provide sizeable font libraries for your use. Any font installed by a program is, of course, available not only in that program but also in any other Windows-based program you run.
Using Your Printer's Own Font Resources
In addition to the fonts that Windows supplies and any additional fonts that you install in Windows, you can use your printer's internal fonts. Your printer driver tells Windows which fonts the printer provides, and those fonts appear in the Font dialog boxes that your programs use.
When you use your printer's internal fonts, Windows doesn't have to download font information or send each page of your document as a bitmapped graphic (an image represented as a series of dots). Therefore, printing is likely to be quicker. In exchange for this speed increase, however, you might have to sacrifice some degree of correspondence between the appearance of your document on the screen and its appearance on paper.
SEE ALSO
For information about printer drivers, see "Specifying a Driver"
When you format a document with an internal printer font, Windows displays the same font on the screen if it can. If Windows doesn't have a screen font to match the printer font you select, it gives you the closest match that it can. For example, if you choose the Courier font that's built into your printer, Windows formats your text on the screen using its own OpenType Courier font (Courier New).
Even when the screen font used by Windows doesn't exactly match the printer font you select, Windows-based programs attempt to show you where your lines will break on the printed page. The correspondence of line endings on the screen to line endings on paper might not always be perfect, however, and some programs do a better job of this than others. If precise text positioning is critical, it's always best to avoid printer fonts that don't have equivalent screen fonts.
EAN: 2147483647
Pages: 317