[THIN] ttfsub.gpd, true type, and nonstandard point sizes with UPDII

From: Henry Sieff <hsieff@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "'thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx'" <thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 15 Jul 2004 10:03:45 -0500

So, I don't know if anyone ever sees this issue, but if they have, I solved
it and just had to share:

ISSUE
===========

When printing documents with unusual point sizes of Arial and Times New
Roman (6 point and 10.5 point) using the UPDII to certain printers
(including the HP1300 and various others) the fonts would render completely
wrong, often causing huge formatting issues like words overlapping and the
like.

WHAT CAUSED IT
===========

Part of the functionality of the Color 4500 driver includes font
substitution, where TrueType soft fonts are replaced with device fonts for
certain "universal" fonts, including Arial and Times New Roman. This can be
set in control panel for the printer. And is supposes to decrease the size
of certain print jobs by avoiding having to download the font to machine,
according to what I've read. However, some printers do not support the
non-standard font sizes when told to substiture, and so can't render the
page properly.

FIXING IT
===========

Turning off font substitution can be done in the individual settings for a
printer in the control panel->Device Settings tab (expand the Font
Substituion Table and setting Arial and Times New Roman to "Don't
Substiture". However, this is not feasible on large scale, and doing it in a
login script is unwieldy.

However, there is a master font substitution template in
C:\WINNT\system32\spool\drivers\w32x86\3\ called ttfsub.gpd. Remove the
following:

*TTFS: Arial
{
  *TTFontName: "Arial"
  *DevFontName: "Arial"
}
*TTFS: TNR
{
  *TTFontName: "Times New Roman"
  *DevFontName: "Times New Roman"
}

At that point, print drivers which support font substitution for these fonts
will no longer enable them by default for the FST.

I expected to see an increase in print job size on the server-side spooler
after this along with a decrease in performance and increase in the ICA
traffic generated by doing this, but did not. My guess is that ICA already
has a method of offloading the font download from the server to the client
for bandwidth optimization.

Like I said, an obscure problem, but it took me two days of hassle to figure
it out, and if I save just one person the annoyance. . .

Thanks,

--
Henry Sieff
Network Engineer
Orthodontic Centers of America
Ph: (504) 620-3420
Cell: (504) 931-4638
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[THIN] ttfsub.gpd, true type, and nonstandard point sizes with UPDII

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