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