ESC/P2 proportional fonts

[Marcel Kilgus]

Hi.

I'm trying to figure out the character spacing of the proportional fonts
of the ESC/P2 language. The instructions in the ESC/P2 manuals are easy
enough to follow, but the result of the formula doesn't match the actual
printout of my Epson Stylus Color 740. E.g. if I print the word "Roman"
in the "Roman T" font at 32 points I get a result that is roughly 1.28"
wide, but if I add up the widths for the single characters according to
the table in the ESC/P2 manual I get 530/360" or about 1.47".

Anybody got any idea why there's such a large difference between theory
and practice?

TIA, Marcel

 

[Arthur Entlich]

I'm not sure, but it is possible that Epson built in Kerning pairs into
their font definitions.

To test, try printing the same word in several different orders and see
if the word is still the same length.

ROMAN
RMNAO
OMARN

Etc,

If it changes length, then chances are Epson uses kerning pairs in their
font spacing definitions.

Art

 

[Marcel Kilgus]

I'm not sure, but it is possible that Epson built in Kerning pairs into
their font definitions.

In this case I have now found out that the usual table does not apply at
all to the two new fonts EPSON has introduced (of course the manual
forgot to mention this fact). It's strange that the character width of
those two doesn't seem to be documented anywhere, I've spend hours
looking for them. I've managed to extract some values from an ancient
binary of a printer driver, though, which is at least better than
nothing.

But thanks anyway,

Marcel