Font interpretation

This page applies to Harlequin v13.1r0 and later; both Harlequin Core and Harlequin MultiRIP.

The Harlequin RIP interprets all the common font formats.

Several different types of font can be installed and used with the Harlequin RIP:

• OpenType fonts are cross-platform and can represent either TrueType or CFF (PostScript language Type 2) characters. They contain rich typographical information for layout applications to use.
• Each OpenType font has a single font file containing all information about that font. OpenType, PostScript Type 1, and TrueType fonts can all reside on the same system.
• Type 3 fonts.
• Type 0 (composite) fonts these are special fonts designed to support large character sets such as Japanese or Chinese. They can include many Type 1, Type 3, or Type 4 fonts.
• Character identifier (CID) composite fonts, together with associated character map (CMap) files used to produce CID-keyed fonts, which exist only in the memory of the RIP (or other RIPs). CID-keyed fonts fulfil the same purposes as Type 0 fonts but can be defined more flexibly (using CID fonts and CMap files) and so form the preferred format for new fonts.
• TrueType (type 42) fonts.
• Morisawa fonts.

The Harlequin RIP also supports the use of a variety of other fonts, for example, when they are embedded in PostScript language or PDF jobs. The embedded fonts can include Compact Font Format (CFF/Type 2), Type 42, and Type 32 fonts.

All installed fonts are placed in the SW\fonts folder, except for CID fonts and CMap files, which are placed in the CIDFont and CMap folders, respectively. The leaf fonts of many composite fonts are also installed elsewhere. The HqnFontConverter procset provides a procedure convertfonts, which takes an array of filenames and installs the fonts in the correct place. Procedures are also available to delete and list installed fonts.

For more information see The HqnFontConverter procset.