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 may contain fonts that aren't available on the current printer, or there may be more than one font with the same name installed on your system.

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—typeface name, character set, 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 7.3 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 7.4 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

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