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From: johnl@walt.cc.utexas.edu (John Lange)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.ms
Subject: Printing vertical text in Windows
Message-ID: <37684@ut-emx.uucp>
Date: 27 Sep 90 02:46:20 GMT
Sender: news@ut-emx.uucp
Reply-To: johnl@walt.cc.utexas.edu (John Lange)
Organization: The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas
Lines: 22

Surely someone has run into this problem before.  How do you get both
horizontal and vertical fonts on printers such as the HP Laserjet
from MS Windows?  I know the DEVCAPS claim that almost nothing can
do rotated text, even to the screen.  However, I wrote a routine to
do vertical text to the screen, and it looks quite nice.  The secret
was to write the text to a bitmap, rotate the bitmap, and then put
the bitmap on the screen.  This technique won't work with most
printers since the fonts are not necessarily on the computer at all.

Still, being the perfectionist that I am, I desire to have horizontal
and vertical fonts on the printed page at one time, regardless of
the destination printer.  I know it can be done because MATLAB
(the math package) does it.  I did notice that MATLAB comes with
a font file specifically for the Laserjet.  They must be doing some
fancy bit manipulation since the Laserjet (at least the old ones)
don't allow both landscape and portrait fonts at the same time. 

I would prefer not to use vector fonts since they don't really look
as nice.  Anyway, if you know of anyone who has climbed this mountain
before, please let me know.  Any words of wisdom would be appreciated.

John Lange voice: 512-454-4797