Question: 

Our document designers our changing some of our documents from landscape orientation to portrait. Are we going to need different versions of our fonts and images?

 

Answer: 

The way the rotation of fonts and images are handled varies based on what printing format you are using.

 

In AFPDS, fonts can be rotated in ninety-degree increments. Text in AFP can be set from left-to-right, right-to-left, top-to-bottom, or bottom-to-top, and in 0, 90, 180 or 270 degree rotations. AFP page segment images can also be set in 0, 90, 180 or 270-degree rotations (portrait, landscape, inverse portrait, and inverse landscape). So the same AFP fonts and images can be used for both portrait and landscape documents.

 

If you are printing Xerox Metacode or DJDEs, you will need separate resources for portrait and landscape documents. Xerox was able to achieve faster printing speeds early on by requiring fonts and images to be created in the needed orientation so that rotation was not required. In the original installation (A03) fonts provided with Xerox 9700, the 6th letter of the font name indicates the rotation.

 

Fonts ending in D are in landscape orientation, fonts ending in E are portrait, fonts ending in F are inverse portrait and fonts ending in H are inverse landscape. Xerox IMGs and LGOs are also orientation specific.

 

You have much more flexibility if you are printing in PCL or PostScript. PCL and PostScript allow text to be printed at any angle, not just 0, 90, 180 or 270 degrees. The document composition software you use may limit your selection of angles. If you need to print AFP or Metacode documents with text at an angle, fonts can be built where each character is rotated to the desired angle. Each individual character in an angled font is then set at an appropriate x and y coordinate to allow the text to be read correctly.

​

If you would like to speak to someone to have some guidance in the best way to make an update or change a font on a document, reach out to us, we are here to help.

 

If you need help with fonts or other printing resources, contact COPI.