Datamax-O'Neil AN-16 User Manual

AN-16 (Single Byte Character Set Font File Format)

February 24, 2006

The printer will accept fonts via download. Each fon t consists of a header followed by a series of graphic bit maps of each
character, in ASCII order (e.g. the first character might be a space, followed by an exclamation point, followed by double
quotes etc), or whatever mapping is represented by that fon t. The file must be in binary. There are several versions of .F ON
files - each version uses a slightly different header.

Each character of glyph is represented by its own bitmap
number of bytes even if all bits within that byte are not used. A "one" will turn the paper dark ; a "zero" will leave the paper
white. There must be a bit mapped entry for each character within the sequence to be represented. If the font is proportional,
then an extra 2 bytes is added to the be ginning of the bitmap for each glyph. Those 2 bytes contain the wid th in bits of that
particular character.

Each font has a unique one character and five character name (e.g. MF
used in the line printer mode to select the font via the ESC w command, and as a n abbreviated method to refer to the fon t in
Easy Print protocol. The five character name is use d in Easy Print protocol only. You ma y select any one a nd five character
names, but they MUST BE UNIQUE. If they are NOT unique, then the first font downloaded with that name will be selectable
and the rest will be unusable.

To speed finding fonts, each five character name has a MOD 256 summa
value, ADD the ASCII value of each character (in HEX) and use the lower order byte . For example, the characters in the
name PT10B have ASCII values 50H, 54H, 31H, 30H, and 42H which add to 147H. Using just the lower order byte, we would
enter 47H in the table where it says "MOD 256 summation..."

Version 1.0 HEADER (thermal only):

The version 1.0 header fonts are used in the MF2, MF3, and 2t/4t printers with IrDA
The 54 bytes (ALL bytes must be present) within the header are as follows:
4 BYTES May be anything, rewritten internally
3 BYTES Font version number (must be "1.0")
1 BYTE Mod 256 summation of the five character name
5 BYTES Five character name for this font
1 BYTE One character name for this font
1 BYTE Must be 00 for a monospace font
Must be 05 for a proportional font
2 BYTES, LSB 1st Number of dots wide for a monospace font
0xFFFF for a proportional font
2 BYTES, LSB 1st Number of dots high
1 BYTE Number of bytes in each row
2 BYTES Number of bytes in each character
1 BYTE First ASCII character represented in this font
1 BYTE Last ASCII character represented in this font
1 BYTE Reserved
1 BYTE USER version number
8 BYTE USER creation date
20 BYTES USER description

. Each row of each character represented contains an integer

226, PT10B, FONT1). The one character name is

tion of that name in the header. To calculate this

Version 1.1 HEADER (impact only):

The version 1.1 header fonts are used in the 8i Flash 180 CPS impact printers
The 55 bytes (ALL bytes must be present) within the header are as follows:
4 BYTES May be anything, rewritten internally
3 BYTES Font version number (must be "1.1")
1 BYTE Mod 256 summation of the five character name
5 BYTES Five character name for this font
1 BYTE One character name for this font
1 BYTE Must be 00 for monospace font
Must be 05 for proportional font
2 BYTES, LSB 1st Number of dots wide for monospace font
0xFFFF for proportional font
2 BYTES, LSB 1st Number of dots high
1 BYTE Number of bytes in each row
2 BYTES Number of bytes in each character
1 BYTE Number of added spaces for compressed (impact)
1 BYTE First ASCII character represented in this font
1 BYTE Last ASCII character represented in this font
1 BYTE Dotline to place underline (impact)
1 BYTE USER version number
8 BYTE USER creation date
20 BYTES USER description

Version 1.3 HEADER (thermal and impact):

The 71 bytes (ALL bytes must be present) within the header are as follows:
4 BYTES May be anything, rewritten internally
4 BYTES Font version number (must be "1.3",0x00 terminating NUL)
1 BYTE Mod 256 summation of the five character name
6 BYTES Five character name for this font with 0x00 terminating NUL
Impact:
1 BYTE One character name for this font
1 BYTE Name of PICA pitch font in this set (impact)
1 BYTE Name of ELITE pitch font in this set (impact)
1 BYTE Name of ITALIC PICA pitch font in this set (impact)
1 BYTE Name of ITALIC ELITE pitch font in this set
OR Thermal:
1 BYTE One character name for this font
1 BYTE One character name for this font
1 BYTE One character name for this font
1 BYTE One character name for this font
1 BYTE One character name for this font
Impact AND Thermal:
1 BYTE Must be 00 for monospace font
Must be 05 for proportional font
1 BYTE Must be 01 if this font is to appear on the self test printout
Must be 00 if this font is NOT to appear on the self test printout

Impact:
2 BYTES, LSB 1st Actual number of dots wide
0xFFFF for proportional font
2 BYTES, LSB 1st Number of dots w
0xFFFF for proportional font
2 BYTES, LSB 1st Number of dots wide for monospace font, PICA condensed
0xFFFF for proportional font
2 BYTES, LSB 1st Number of dots w
0xFFFF for proportional font
2 BYTES, LSB 1st Number of dots wide
0xFFFF for proportional font
OR Thermal:
2 BYTES, LSB 1st Number of dots wide for monospace font
0xFFFF for proportional font
2 BYTES, LSB 1st Number of dots wide for monospace font
0xFFFF for proportional font
2 BYTES, LSB 1st Number of dots wide for monospace font
0xFFFF for proportional font
2 BYTES, LSB 1st Number of dots wide for monospace font
0xFFFF for proportional font
2 BYTES, LSB 1st Number of dots wide for monospace font
0xFFFF for proportional font
2 BYTES, LSB 1st Number of dots high
1 BYTE Number of bytes in each row
2 BYTES Number of bytes in each character
1 BYTE First ASCII character represented in this font
1 BYTE Last ASCII character represented in this font
1 BYTE Dotline to place underline (impact)
1 BYTE USER version number
9 BYTE USER creation date (8 bytes plus terminating NUL)
21 BYTES USER description (20 bytes plus terminating NUL)

ide, monospace font, PICA pitch

ide for monospace font, ELITE pitch

for monospace font, ELITE condensed

EACH CHARACTER:

Characters are represented with a bitmap within a "cell". The cell represents a character position on the printed line. The cell
must extend upwards to the top of the highest character and down to the bottom of the lowest character. Characters are le ft
justified within this cell; white space between characters can be adjusted but exist on the right side within this cell.

The "cell" for each font may be any width, but the downloaded image width mus
of bits within a byte), and may be any height. Each c haracter then contains a series of bytes; one or more bytes constitute
each dot line row of the character; a sequence of these byte(s), then will build the entire character one dot line row at a time.

Each dot within the cell is 1/200 inch tall and 1/200 inch wide. To build a character approximately 0.07 inc hes tall and .06
inches wide
represented by two bytes, we could specify a character width of 12 dots for a zero dot spacing between characters, 13 dots for
a one dot spacing, on up to 16 dots for a 4 dot spacing. This size character wou ld probably look b est with a 2 d ot spacing, so
we would specify a width of 14 dots total in the font h eader.

, we would use 14 dotlines high and 12 dots wide. Since the 12 dot width of the character would need to be

t be a multiple of 8 wide (since 8 is the number