My computer is a PC-compatible with a 1.5MHz Athlon chip and Windows
XP Pro. In Oct 2002 I bought a Samsung ML-1450 laser printer together
with a 32MB memory chip, giving the printer a total of 36MB internal
memory. After some delay I was also able to obtain the Postscript 3
upgrade module, which consists of a chip to be inserted into the
printer in a slot next to the memory slot. The chip was originally
manufactured for the ML-6060, apparently, but works with my printer as
well. No documentation or software was provided.
This Postscript chip comes with a large number of resident fonts. I
believe the number advertised is 126. In any case one can obtain a
printout with 76 fonts, including the standard Helvetica, Courier,
AvantGarde, Palatino etc. but also some Mac fonts such as Chicago and
Monaco, and some more unusual and interesting fonts such as
HoeflerText, AntiqueOlive, and a big set of Univers fonts.
My problem is, *how do I use these fonts?* My previous printer, a
Lexmark, came with a floppy containing the .pfb and .pfm files for the
resident PS fonts, but the Samsung package contains nothing. These
files are essential to using the fonts in documents, since the
software needs the font metrics for screen display and to determine
the length of lines etc. But the Samsung module was only a chip in a
box.
I have tried to explain this to Samsung tech support but had enormous
difficulty getting them even to understand what the problem was.
Sometimes they said that some expert would call be back, but this has
never happened.
Can anyone help me? |
Request for Question Clarification by
aht-ga
on
15 Sep 2003 23:15 PDT
superturtle-ga:
While obtaining the .pfb and .pfm files for each of the fonts
contained on the chip might prove near impossible (or at least
prohibitively expensive), you can achieve a similar result by using
the font substitution table in the printer driver to substitute a
printer font for a screen font from a different font family. Given the
large number of free, downloadable TrueType font files available on
the Internet, you can probably find a similar (but unfortunately not
identical) font to any one you are interested in, then use the font
substitution table to have the printer use the better font from the
chip rather than attempt to work with a lower-quality TrueType font.
Resources for free True Type fonts include:
About.com's Desktop Publishing guide:
http://desktoppub.about.com/library/fonts/bl_fontaz.htm
I realize this isn't exactly what you were looking for, but perhaps it
is a viable alternative for you.
Regards,
aht-ga
|
Clarification of Question by
superturtle-ga
on
16 Sep 2003 05:33 PDT
Dear Aht, this suggestion might well provide an interesting
alternative... though the character widths in the screen font are not
going to be identical to those in the printer font, leading to
potential ragged lines and spill-overs. I have several libraries of
Truetype and Type 1 fonts and could probably dig up close equivalents
to a good many of the hardwired fonts on the chip.
I think what I really feel is that Samsung owes me the .pfb and .pfm
files, otherwise how did they expect anyone to do anything with those
fonts? After a long go-round on GA with another researcher over the
weekend (thanks again Serenata), I felt I had defined the question
well enough to pose it by Email to Samsung tech support, and have done
so. I'll wait for their reply, and for any other suggestions you and
the rest of the GA wizards can come up with. Thanks!
|
