How Windows NT Matches Fonts

When an application requests characters to print or display, Windows NT must find the appropriate font to use from among the fonts installed on your system. Finding the font can be complex because, for example, your document might contain fonts that aren't available on the current printer, or multiple fonts with the same name might be installed on your system.

To be sure you get the desired characters, see your printer documentation for the character set supported by the printer. Then see the online Help for Character Map for instructions on entering codes from the keyboard for special characters.

The basic rules that Windows NT uses for locating a font are as follows:

When Windows NT uses the font mapping table to match screen fonts to printer fonts, the characteristics used to find the closest match are—in descending order of importance—character set, typeface name, variable versus fixed pitch, family, height, width, weight, slant, underline, and strikeout.

The following table shows which types of Windows NT fonts can be printed on different kinds of printers.

Table 8.3 Windows NT Printable Fonts

Printer
type

Device
fonts

Raster
fonts

Vector
fonts

TrueType
fonts

Dot Matrix

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

HPPCL

Yes

No

Yes

Yes

PostScript

Yes

No

Yes

Yes

Plotter

Yes

No

Yes

Yes


The following table lists the character sets installed with Windows NT.

Table 8.4 Windows NT Character Sets

Font

Font type, spacing, and default sizes

Arial Bold Italic

TrueType, proportional, scalable

Arial Bold

TrueType, proportional, scalable

Arial Italic

TrueType, proportional, scalable

Arial

TrueType, proportional, scalable

Courier New Bold Italic

TrueType, fixed, scalable

Courier New Bold

TrueType, fixed, scalable

Courier New Italic

TrueType, fixed, scalable

Courier New

TrueType, fixed, scalable

Courier

Raster, fixed, 10,12,15

Lucida Console

TrueType, fixed, scalable

Lucida Console Bold

TrueType, fixed, scalable

Lucida Console Italic

TrueType, fixed, scalable

Lucida Console Bold Italic

TrueTrype, fixed, scalable

Modern

Vector, proportional, scalable

MS Sans Serif

Raster, proportional, 8, 10, 12, 14, 18, 24

MS Serif

Raster, proportional, 6, 7, 8, 10, 12, 14, 18, 24

Roman

Vector, proportional, scalable

Script

Vector, proportional, scalable

Small

Raster, proportional, 2, 3, 4,5, 6, 7

Symbol**

Raster, proportional, 8, 10, 12, 14, 18, 24

Symbol**

TrueType, proportional, scalable

System

Raster, proportional, display-dependent size

Terminal*

Raster, fixed, display-dependent size

Times New Roman Bold Italic

TrueType, proportional, scalable

Times New Roman Bold

TrueType, proportional, scalable

Times New Roman Italic

TrueType, proportional, scalable

Times New Roman

TrueType, proportional, scalable

Wingdings

TrueType, proportional, scalable


* OEM character set, rather than ANSI character set

** Symbol character set, rather than ANSI character set

You can also use the Windows NT Character Map to select and insert special characters in your document.

When you insert special characters in a document to print, the character you see on the screen might not be correct because it is displayed using the Windows ANSI portion of the Unicode character set and the best matching screen font for the current printer font. However, the printed document will contain the correct character. Conversely, if you type an ANSI character that appears on screen but is not supported in your printer fonts, some other character will be printed instead.