The Importance of Curiosity and Experience, Part II

Years ago (some time around 1998, since the Canon BJ-200 printer came out that year), when I got my own first Windows computer (replacing the Commodore 64 I had in my room), I had no printer attached to it so I didn’t install a printer.

I noticed while using WordPerfect for Windows or Word (I can’t remember now) that I could only use a few of the installed fonts in documents, mostly the old raster fonts.

Later, when the family computer was upgraded to the Canon inkjet printer, I inherited the old dot-matrix printer. After installing it, I noticed that I had a larger number of fonts available while all installed fonts were available on the family computer.

Canon BJ-200 BubbleJet printer

Source: Wikimedia

Curious, I installed the driver for family computer printer on my computer (on LPT2: since I didn’t think you could have 2 printers connected to the same parallel port).

That’s when all fonts were finally available in my word processor.

“Ah-ha,” I thought. “Applications must query the print system for available fonts.”

Years later, before widespread Internet use, a user calls up and says that they can only use a few of their installed fonts in their WordPro document in Windows 95 – not TrueType fonts like Arial or Times New Roman. This sounded familiar.

I ask the user to install a generic PostScript printer driver set to print to FILE:. They install it… and now they can use all their fonts!

What I had learned years earlier became useful again. When the same problem in a different application appeared later, I knew where to go for the solution.