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 | Device | Raster | Vector | TrueType |
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.