Fonts for special effects in wordperfect – Until Version 5.0 arrived, WordPerfect was firmly ensconced in the world of the office typewriter. For instance, recall from the the discussion of units of measure that previous versions of WordPerfect used a standard pica-size measurement: ten characters per horizontal inch and six lines per vertical inch. All that has changed. Now WordPerfect wants you to understand the rudiments of desktop publishing, an entirely different world from that of the typewriter indeed.
As a prelude to the general discussion of printing this blogpost introduces the most common special printing effects. Even as simple a thing as boldface print can now take you into the world of desktop publishing, also called personal publishing. That’s because WordPerfect is more “printer oriented” than ever and keeps track of what printer you’re using with a particular document.
That was the bad news; now for the good news. You don’t have to learn very much about desktop publishing to work with WordPerfect. This post gets you started on the right foot. When you become a “power user,” you can explore other aspects of desktop publishing in later blogposts. Dear Reader, please bear with me for a few pages, because you have some essential reading to do! This may all seem like advanced stuff, but you’ll quickly get the hang of it.
Contents
- 1 Blame It on the Laser Printer
- 2 Typestyles, Fonts, and Families
- 3 Points, Picas, Pitch, and Proportionals
- 4 The Base Font
- 5 Begin and End Codes
- 6 Boldface Print As You Type
- 7 Underlines As You Type
- 8 The Bold and Underline Codes
- 9 Adding Special Effects to Existing Text
- 10 Removing Special Effects
- 11 Superscripts and Subscripts
- 12 The Normal and Base Font Choices
Blame It on the Laser Printer
What made desktop publishing an interesting and potentially revolutionary idea in the first place was the appearance of the desktop size laser printer.
Provided you have a couple of grand to buy a laser printer, and the cost is dropping substantially, you can create near typeset quality documents for a fraction of the cost of typesetting.
There’s the key word: typesetting. The laser printer evolved from the world of typesetting, not from the world of the typewriter. With typesetting came a whole new set of terms, but the only ones you need to know now appear in the next two sections.
Typestyles, Fonts, and Families
A dot matrix or daisy wheel printer prints in a particular typestyle that may either be built into the character set of the printer or reside on a daisy wheel or thimble. A typestyle is, as its name implies, one particular style of type such as Times Roman or Courier. This book is printed in a typestyle called English Times. You’ll also see the word typeface to mean typestyle.
A font is one particular version of a typestyle in one particular size. So Courier 10 is one font and Courier 12 is another, because the two are different sizes of the same typeface. Some dot matrix printers have a couple of different fonts, while daisy wheel printers let you change fonts by inserting a different print wheel. Laser printers, however, offer you many different fonts simultaneously.
The distinction between typestyles and fonts becomes significant when you print special effects. Conventional printers handle many effects by a purely mechanical printing action. For example, to print text in boldface, the printer normally overprints each letter two or three times, sometimes even moving the printhead slightly to make a filled in look. However, there is only a limited number of special effects that you can coax out of a conventional printer.
A laser printer, like a typesetting machine, however, usually prints a special effect by switching to a different font. For example, boldface print is an emboldened version of a particular typestyle in a particular size. The same procedure applies for italics.
This means that a laser printer needs several different versions of the same typestyle in the same size. Each version is a different font. For example, a laser printer that contains the Times Roman typestyle might have four or five Times Roman fonts: one for regular text, one for boldface, one for italics, one for bold italics, and one for super/subscripts. What’s more, if you want to use a larger or smaller version of the same typestyle, you need other fonts.
A family, or font family, then, is a collection of all fonts available in a particular typestyle on a particular laser printer. For instance, the Times Roman family may include regular, bold, and italic fonts in a variety of sizes.
Points, Picas, Pitch, and Proportionals
Well, that wasn’t too difficult to understand, but now the confusion begins in earnest. Typesetters normally refer to font sizes in terms of points or picas. There are 72 points in an inch, 12 points in a pica, and thus 6 picas per inch. One of WordPerfect’s new units of measure is the printer’s point, although the default unit of measure is the inch.
On laser printers, font size is usually given in points and is generally just a little bigger than the height of a font’s tallest character. So think of font size as a vertical measurement. (To save your sanity, you’ll bypass the metric system altogether!)
Pitch refers to the number of printed characters per horizontal inch. The larger the font, the fewer characters will fit on an inch. Traditional typewriter pica type prints ten characters per horizontal inch, while typewriter elite prints
twelve.
On typewriters and most printers, every character takes up the same amount of space on a printed line. For instance, in the default pitch (10), a character occupies one-tenth of an inch. This is fixed-width printing. However, some characters are actually narrower than others. Consider the i compared to the W and you’ll understand what I mean. You’ll also then understand why “rivers” of white space appear on pages that have been printed with fixed-width fonts and justified right margins.
The reason that books look much better than computer printouts is in part because typesetting equipment can take into consideration the actual with of each character individually. This is known as proportional spacing.
Word Perfect maintains a table of spacing values and continually refers to this table when it sets up a line. It totals all the charecters’ widths on each line and figures out the extra spacing between words according to the result. This certainly takes more computational ability than with nonproportional fonts.
Okay, what does all this font business mean to you if you don’t own a laser printer? Not very much, so relax! For you the word font should just be a synonym for “special effect.” All you have to remember is that whenever you want to print in a special effect other than the regular typestyle, you’re working with fonts. That is, for every special effect you’ll tell WordPerfect to change to a different font.
The Base Font
Now you come to the gist of the matter. When you select a printer, WordPerfect also chooses the most common font that works with your printer. This is the base font, or initial font, and as you’d expect it’s the starting point (base) for all font selection. WordPerfect always prints a special effect with the base font as its guide. That is, when you choose boldface print, WordPerfect switches to the boldface version of the base font.
For example, suppose you select the Diablo 630 daisy wheel printer. WordPerfect then “assumes” that the base font is Multipurpose 10, which is a fixed-width font that prints ten characters per horizontal inch. You can also choose one or two other fonts as the base font if you have the correct print wheel installed in your printer. Another printer might use a 12-point, proportionally spaced base font.
Note: Word Perfect displays an asterisk (+) next to a font name to indicate that it’s a proportionally spaced font. If you select a laser printer, such as the Hewlett-Packard LaserJet Series II that I’ll use in other posts, there are more base fonts.
This brings up several important notions:
- You’ll have to add new font change codes to documents from previous WordPerfect versions, because the old codes won’t work any-more. See File Format Changes in the Prelude.
- You should be aware of what the base font is for the printer you re using. Most of the time, of course, you’ll work with just one typestyle if you don’t have a laser printer. That typestyle becomes your base font. As a matter of fact, even if you do own a laser printer, you of a bible.
- Your printer may not be able to print all the speciat fonts that WordPerfect supports. To see what special effects work with a have font, print the PRINTER. TST document that WordPerfect Corporation supplies. Wait! You don’t know how to print yet! Just learn the special eflects now, then print later.
- Whenever you change to another font from the base font to print a special effect, you have 10 tell WordPerfect when you want to switch back to the base font, See Begin and End Codes, next.
- Although WordPerfect selects a base font when you set up your printer, you can choose another as the initial base font. Depending on your printer, there may be several base fonts from which you can choose.
- All size and appearance font changes refer to the base font. For exam-ple, if the base font is Times Roman 12 point and you select the large font, WordPerfect looks for a larger version of Times Roman. If it doesn’t find one, it retains the base font. If you include italics codes and there’s an italicized version of the base font, Word Perfect uses it.Otherwise, it retains the base font.
- If you select another printer, WordPerfect then uses the new printer’s base font and any fonts you’ve set up, even if they weren’t available in the first printer. That means that your documents can print correctly on any printer, but that they’ll print even more nicely on printers that support more fonts.
- When you select a different printer, WordPerfect normally reformats the text to take into account the new base font. For example, if you’re using an Epson printer with a 12-point proportionally spaced font and switch to the Diablo 630 with its fixed-width font, then WordPerfect readjusts the lines for the new base font. Recall from the Prelude that WordPerfect calls this intelligent printing.
- Finally, WordPerfect displays special effects on the screen in a variety of ways that depend on your monitor. Boldface usually appears as highlighting, and underlining either appears as itself or a shading. If you have a color monitor, you’ll probably see different colors. Some monitors can actually show the effects, for instance, italics. See also Changing the Screen Display of Fonts later in this post.
Begin and End Codes
All special printing effect font changes appear as codes that you insert into a document. The difference between these codes and others, such as hard returns or tabs, is that most of the time you need two codes: one to turn the special printing on and another to turn it off. I call them begin codes and end codes,but old-time computerists refer to them as toggle. WordPerfect Corporation calls them paired codes.
A printer, like a computer, is a dumb machine that will do everything you tell it to do and will continue to do so until you tell it to stop. If you instruct it to begin underlining but forget to tell it to stop underlining, then the rest of your text will be duly undertined. Figure 4-1 below Illustrates toggle switches that begin and end underlining.
Fortunately, WordPerfect indicates on the sereen the text that will print in a in a different font. For instance, it can show underlining either as underlining or in a different shading or colour. So if you look up and see the entire file being underlined before your very eyes, this indicates that you forgot to turn eit the underlining code. It’s a simple procedure to right this minor wrong at any time. WordPerfect also inserts both begin and end codes for you, You can insert special effects into a document in two ways:
1. While you’re typing the text, turn the effect on (select a different font) just before you type the text. When you get to the point where you want to stop the special effect, return to the base font.
2. Around existing text, With only a couple exceptions, this requires that you set up the text as a block.
Are you thoroughly confused, or perhaps bored, by all this? Don’t ber because you’re now ready to learn about the most common special effects It’s really quite easy!
Boldface Print As You Type
Most printers, laser and otherwise, can print underlining and boldface, Before you learn about the jazzier special effects, concentrate on the two you’ll prov ably use most often. As usual, I’Il step you through the new aspects of the example, but then you’re on your own, Take a look at this sample memo.
but don’t type it yet. Notice that the centered title is in boldface and that some words are underlined
Confidential Memo
To:
Jaime Pescado, Director of Marketing
From:
Randolph D. Sturgeon, Head Buyer
Re:
Some Thoughts
I am sick and tired of being a big fish in a little pond! When are you going to realize my true potential by getting me out of this rathole and into a job with more bite? As you know, I have repeatedly broached the subject of the company’s marketing plans with you. Here are some more ideas to illustrate my great
potential.
It seems that the Felt Platypus chain is suffering from what I call the ho-hum syndrome. Diners are bored by our menus and would rather eat at the golden arches. I suggest the following two ad campaigns to get the FP back into the swing of things.
First, the broadside: Dine with a Platypus Tonight. How’s that for a catchy title? Then the more subtle approach: Is There A Platypus In Your Future? Both would feature, of course, Pete the Platypus, the company mascot.
You owe it to yourself and to the organization to get me involved with marketing, where I really belong.
Overlook Mr. Sturgeon’s rather forceful style and just get the work done. Make sure the screen is clear. Start by centering the first line:
Press SHIFT-F6 Center
Insert the begin bold instruction like this:
Press F6 Bold
Notice that the Pos number on the status line has changed to whatever is your monitor’s way of displaying boldface print. The position number will remain in this display until you turn boldface off. The Pos number always reflects the font at the cursor location of a document. Although the codes Absolute Beginner
aren’t revealed right now, trust me that WordPerfect has inserted both a begin and end bold code.
Tip: You can change the colors that WordPerfect uses to display different fonts on the screen (Appendix A).
-Type the title, then stop! Always turn off a special printing effect as soon as you’re finished with it:
Press F6 Bold
The Pos number returns to its normal appearance, and WordPerfect has positioned the cursor past the end bold code. In a moment you’ll take a look at the codes.
Press RETURN three times
for spacing.
Continue typing the memo. For instance, type To: and press TAB twice. Then type Jaime Pescado, and so on. When you get to the word sick, stop!
Underlines As You Type
To begin underlining this word:
Press F8 Underline
Notice that the Pos number on the status line has changed to whatever is your monitor’s way of displaying underlining. The position number will remain in this display until you turn underlining off.
Туре sick and tired
Press F8 Underline
to turn underlining off.
The Bold and Underline Codes
Now it’s time to take a look at how WordPerfect sets up the boldface and underline codes:
Press HOME,HOME,UP ARROW
Press ALT-F3 Reveal Codes or F11 Reveal Codes
The begin bold code is (BOLD], and the end code is [botd]. The begin underline code is [UND], and the end code is (und). As with the center codes, the begin code contains uppercase letters, and the end code is in lowercase.
Adding Special Effects to Existing Text
Remember that the only way you can add boldface or underlining to existing text is with the block approach. Mr. Sturgeon is waxing strong, so he decides to underline the words great potential in the first paragraph.
Position the cursor under the g of great in the first paragraph.
Press ALT-F4 Block or F12 Block
Type L
(that’s a lowercase L) to extend the block.
Press F8 Underline
to underline the block.
Although you won’t do this, how would you extend the underlining in a phrase? For instance, Mr. Sturgeon tells you to underline the phrase to illustrate my great potential, which already contains underlining. You could first delete the codes and start over, as the next section discusses, but a faster method is just to block the entire phrase and press F8 Underline. When you do, WordPerfect adjusts the codes. Neat!
Removing Special Effects
Mr. Sturgeon feels that perhaps he’s being just a little too forceful, so he wants you to delete the underlining codes surrounding sick and tired. To remove a special effect, you simply have to delete one of the codes. It could be the begin code or the end code-whichever is closer! WordPerfect will then delete the matching code in the set for you. It can do this trick because it distinguishes between begin and end codes. If you delete a begin code, WordPerfect finds the next end code. If you delete an end code, WordPerfect finds the previous begin code.
Position the cursor under the s of sick and tired.
Stop! Do you really know where the begin underlining code is? No! It’s best to be sure:
Press ALT-F3 Reveal Codes or F11 Reveal Codes
The cursor is probably in front of the begin underline code. IF it is, position it there now. With the codes still on:
Press DEL
Question: If the cursor were positioned directly after the code, what key would you use? Answer: Right! The BACKSPACE key. You can also search and replace print codes.
Press ALT-F3 Reveal Codes or F11 Reveal Codes
to turn the codes off.
Save the document again, but leave it on the screen.
Again, you won’t stop to do this now, but guess what happens when you attempt to delete a boldface or underline code when the codes aren’t revealed.
Right! Because it’s so easy to position the cursor on a hidden code, when you press DEL to delete a character or BACKSPACE to rub out the previous character, WordPerfect asks you to confirm what you’re doing:
Delete (BOLD] (Y/N)? No
or
Delete (UND] (Y/N)? No
You’d type y to delete, of course.
Superscripts and Subscripts
The next topic involves two popular choices on the size menu: superscripts and subscripts. I’ll discuss the other sizes in later posts.
Note: Version 4.2 had a separate key, SHIFT-Fl Super/Subscript, for these print effects. The SHIFT-Fl key means something totally different in WordPerfect 5.0 (Appendix A).
When you do superscripts and subscripts on a typewriter, you have to stop and shift the platen up or down a notch or two manually before you can type. After you type the superscript or subscript, you shift the platen back to the regular line. This is exactly what WordPerfect tells the printer to do when you insert codes for superscripts and subscripts.
Note: Some printers don’t support superscripts and subscripts. Generally, WordPerfect prints superscripts and subscripts one-third of a line above or below the regular text line. Your printer may only be able to print in half line or full line increments, so it might be a good idea to use one-and-a-half or double spacing when you’re doing text with superscripts and subscripts. Depending on the base font, WordPerfect may even use a smaller font for superscripts and subscripts! That’s why they’re on the size menu.
By the way, it makes no sense to use superscripts for footnote references, because WordPerfect has an impressive automatic footnoting feature that takes care of numbering and printing footnote references for you.
You don’t have to do this example, but just think about the steps you’d perform:
with all due respects to Comrade. Khrushev, he obviously doesn’t understand the meaning of H2o.
That’s right! When you get to the first 2, press CTRL-F8 Font. type 1 or s [Size), then type 1 or p[Suprscpt). Type the 2, then press RIGHT ARROW to move past the end code and continue the sentence.
Type 2 or b [Subscrpt] for the subscripted second 2, then press RIGHT ARROW once to finish the sentence. The codes are what you’d expect:
(SUPRSCT) and (suprsct) for superscript, and (SUBSCPT) and (subsct] for subscript.
The Normal and Base Font Choices
It’s definitely easier to press RIGHT ARROW to move past the end code when you’re finished with a special effect. If you decide to use the 3 [Normal! choice to return to the base font, you should know that there’s no special code for this. WordPerfect just positions the cursor past whatever end codes are already there.
The 4 [Base Font] choice is different. It lets you switch to an entirely different base font altogether. When you switch base fonts, WordPerfect uses the new font as the base font. Any special effect codes that appear in the document past this location will work with the new base font. Because you may want to use the new base font throughout the rest of the document, this change inserts only one code. WordPerfect Corporation refers to this type of code as an open code.
Depending on your printer, you may see only one base font. Figure 4-2, for example, shows what you might see if you were using the Hewlett-Packard LaserJet II printer. At the bottom of the screen is this menu:
1 Select; N Name Search: 1
You can select a different base font in two ways:
- Use the ARROW keys to move the highlight to the font. Alternately, type n [Name Search], then type the first letter of the font name to position the highlight on the first font that starts with that letter. Then press RETURN. WordPerfect takes you back to the document.
- Use the ARROW keys or name search to move the highlight to the font and type 1 or s [Select). WordPerfect takes you back to the document.
Dear reader, you’re already starting to get into the real nitty-gritty of word processing with wordperfect. Now would be an excellent time to review you’ve learnt so far before you continue.