# Arial font and carriage returns



## MDLarson (Feb 27, 2002)

Carriage Return:
Often abbreviated CR, a carriage return is a special code that moves the cursor (or print head) to the beginning of the current line. In the ASCII character set, a carriage return has a decimal value of 13.
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OK, here's my problem:  I use the Arial font (I know, I know  ), and in some circumstances, little generic squares show up after each line.  I think this is because I hit Return, and the square shows up instead of the invisible carriage return.  But, I'm not sure.  I'm in Illustrator 8, and if I convert the font to outlines, it of course does not show up.

This does NOT happen on my HP DeskJet 935C, HP LaserJet 4MV or PDF export, but DOES happen with my Roland ColorCAMM PC-12 (a PostScript 3 thermal printer / cutter).

I remember seeing this before, but I forget at this point.

Anybody have any insight?


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## Jadey (Feb 27, 2002)

Illustrator has a preference to turn off and on invisibles, as do other programs like Quark and AppleWorks too I believe.


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## Nummi_G4 (Feb 28, 2002)

"I use the Arial font (I know, I know )"


what does that mean?  Arial and Helvetica are the best fonts !


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## MDLarson (Feb 28, 2002)

Arial is a font that Microsoft made popular.  I like it as a plain jane font, and I actually use on everything for our company.  Ideally, I'd like to aquire another more identifying font for our "look" or whatever, but Arial is the easy way out.  For that, I'm a little embarrased.

I can't find that preference in Illustrator anywhere.  Besides, I doubt that's the problem since it shows up on some printers and not on others.


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## BlingBling 3k12 (Mar 3, 2002)

> _Originally posted by MDLarson _
> *I use the Arial font (I know, I know  )*



what's wrong with Arial?! i use it all the time! lucida sans unicode, tahoma & verdana are close 2nd's, 3rd's, and 4th's.... although if i had the Apple Garamond Font working on XP, i'd use it all the time instead...


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## evildan (Mar 4, 2002)

actually, there's a bit of history involved with the reason why a box will appear after a CR. 

Let's see if I can remember it correctly.

If you produce a CR on a PC, then display that text on a mac, it is common occurance to see a box displayed at the end of a line. Why? you ask?

Well, this is all from memory, but as I understand it it goes back to the days of the terminal typers. There were two values associated with the begining of another line. One value dropped the print head down a line and the other was used to kick the print head to the left part of the page.

This is where it gets fuzzy, but if I remember it correctly, those values still exist in the code today. However PC's ignore the extra bit, infact they even write it, but most macs only use one of the two values to do a CR... so the remainder is displayed as the box.

The box is not a hidden element value as was mentioned in previous posts, so you can't turn it off - like you can by hitting F7 in Quark or Command-Y in Illustrator.... but you can try to print from Quark and see if you get the same results (with the same font).

I'd also make sure you have the correct printer/screen fonts installed. I'm sure there's more that could be offered regarding this matter... but that's my 2¢ worth.


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