Fonts in ZPL – Resident, Downloaded and Image Text

ZPL offers three font strategies. Which one fits depends on the font, the language (Unicode?) and the printer model.

1. Resident fonts (fast, no upload)

^XA
^FO50,50^A0N,30,30^FDHello^FS
^XZ

• ^A0N,30,30 – font 0, normal orientation, height 30 dots, width 30 dots
• Resident fonts: 0 (standard A), 1 (bold condensed), 2 (bold), 3 (regular), 4–9 (OCR etc.) – depending on the printer model

Height in dots → pt: pt = dots × 72 / DPI. At 203 dpi: 30 dots ≈ 10.6 pt.

2. Downloaded fonts (memory fonts, ^A@)

Upload a TrueType font once (~DYE:ARIAL.TTF), then use it:

^XA
^A@N,40,40,E:ARIAL.TTF^FDHello^FS
^XZ

^A@o,h,w,d – orientation, height in dots, width in dots, font path on the printer.

3. Image text (TrueType rendered in the backend)

The zplCloud designer renders the text with a TrueType font in the backend and embeds it as a monochrome graphic (^GF). This guarantees identical output on every printer and supports any font and Unicode – at the cost of larger ZPL.

^XA
^FO50,50^GFA,1234,1234,77,...^FS
^XZ

Tips

• Unicode (umlauts, Cyrillic): resident fonts only cover Latin-1. Use a downloaded Unicode TTF (E:LIBERATION_SANS.TTF) or image text.
• Native mode is much faster on long print runs (no graphic transfer).
• Font size in the designer: fontUnit: 'pt' is converted via dots = pt × DPI / 72.