Printing, pre-press, publishing and photography services – yesterday, today and tomorrow

Contents:

1. FONTS
2. FONTS AND TYPEFACES
3. PRINTER DRIVERS
4. PRINTER FONTS
5. THE WINDOWS APPROACH
6. TRUETYPE FONTS
7. FINDING YOUR FONTS
8. ENTER POSTSCRIPT
9. TYPE 1 FONTS
10. FONTS AND THE WEB
11. OpenType and TrueDoc
12. FOR MORE INFORMATION

PRINTER DRIVERS
A printer driver (a file for controlling the particular features of a printer) must be installed in the computer so that a PC can communicate with that printer. In the DOS world, every software program had to have its own proprietary driver for every possible printer users might have. Not only was this inefficient, it could make replacing your printer something of an adventure. There was a good chance of not being able to use the printer with some of your programs if you didn't have a specific driver for them.

After PCs had been around for a while, some attempts were made to address this problem. It became clear that some printers (Epson, Hewlett Packard, IBM, etc.) were more popular than others. Smaller, competing printer makers made their printers more attractive to buyers by adding the ability to emulate the more popular brands. That way, if drivers for the specific printer couldn't be found, the printer could use the drivers for the more popular "name" brands.