Font technology

A standard component built into the Global Graphics’ RIP is a font renderer which is capable or rendering all of the font formats in common use today and in all scripts, including CJK, Hebrew and Arabic. It provides crystal clear rendering to ensure text is clear and bar-codes are readable.

Global Graphics can also supply under license a base set of 35 PS fonts from a range of font vendors if required for building solutions.

To meet the needs of customers who have existing license agreements with font technology suppliers, Global Graphics provides an interface which allows the integration of third party font technology into the RIP.

Global Graphics has integrated, under license, solutions based on Monotype Imaging UFST and Bitstream FontFusion font technology into RIP products for OEM partners via this Pluggable Font Interface Module ( PFIN ).

This has allowed those OEM partners to benefit from the continued use of their existing font licenses and maintain compatibility with existing products they have already shipped.

Additional font rendering technologies could be added via the PFIN interface if required.

Sometimes it is necessary to resolve the issue of missing fonts.

Global Graphics’ RIP technology includes the option to emulate a missing font if required. The patent pending font emulation in the Harlequin RIP® will make a typographically acceptable match to missing fonts with no text overflow and with appropriate character spacing, weight and width.

It’s ideal for cases where you’re trying to print a document that doesn’t include all of the fonts with which it was designed embedded within it.

With in-RIP font emulation enabled, files are submitted to the RIP in the normal way. If during processing of the job, the RIP finds a font is missing, it will construct a suitable replacement on the fly. Emulated fonts have the correct width for every glyph in the font, so that letter and word spacing will be correct, and justified text will continue to be justified, with a straight edge to the text block.

Extended and condensed fonts are emulated just as well as regular typefaces and are constructed at the correct weight, from extra thin to extra black, so the overall appearance of the page (what typographers call the ‘color’) will be unchanged.

The emulated fonts will also be slanted at the right angle, allowing oblique and italic fonts to be correctly displayed. In addition, italic faces will be slightly more ornate than emulations of the roman faces from the same family.

And the emulation won’t cause any re-flow; there won’t be any changes to line-ends and page breaks.

That’s not to say that the emulated fonts will exactly match the font that the designer used in constructing the page. If emulation could do that then nobody would need the original fonts at all! But the emulation is close enough that it will usually be acceptable by all but the most demanding of print buyers, at least for body fonts.

If the designer has used a specialty display face in order to convey a feeling of the wild west, modernity or anything else then it’s more likely that the buyer won’t find the result of in-RIP font emulation as appealing, but at least you can still produce a proof to show them what you can do and use that as a starting point for discussions.

There are some limitations, of course: symbolic or pi fonts cannot be emulated.

PDF, PostScript and EPS files

If the job is submitted as a PDF file, then information required to construct the emulation font will be derived from the PDF file itself.

If it’s submitted as a PostScript or EPS file instead, then the relevant information will be drawn from the database of font metrics supplied with the RIP. That database is quite extensive, but there will always be fonts that are not included, and those also cannot be emulated.

Finally, the font emulation is applicable only to Latin fonts, as used for western European languages and a number of others around the world. Font substitution (see below) can be used for Japanese and other multi-byte languages.

Turning font emulation on and off

Font Emulation is controlled by a RIP configuration parameter so it may be turned on or off as required for a particular job.

There are also controls to allow configuration of the RIP behaviour when font emulation is enabled but a required font could not be emulated; the RIP can either fall back on a default font, or can cancel the job.

Font Substitution

The RIP has a sophisticated Font Substitution mechanism that may be used to give maximum flexibility within a device.

A look-up table is used to allow a specified font to be substituted with another similar font either conditionally or unconditionally. This allows options for example to configure the RIP to substitute if a font is missing, or always substitute a particular font for a different one.

Font substitution can be very effective at replacing missing fonts in scripts that are largely monospaced, such as in CJK text, with characters that are of very similar weights and outlines, at least for body text.

As some font foundries have similar but different names for the same typeface, it is possible to ensure the correct font is used in each case by use of substitution tables.

Total Control

With a wide range of RIP configuration controls it is possible to define the actions taken to suit the environment.

The RIP may be configured to abort the job if a font is not available, substitute a different font of a similar typeface or emulate the font that is missing, and there are font weight controls to compensate for printing technologies ( edge gain or erosion) ).

It will also issue a message to indicate the action which has been taken so this can be clearly reported to the user.