AIX Printer Tips: Printing PCL Math Symbols with AIX Virtual Printers

Contents

About This Document
Printing the Symbols

About This Document

Printing math symbols in text is usually done by an application that generates formatted PCL. If you try to print this data through a virtual printer, the codepage translation causes problems. This document describes how to modify the virtual printer to print files that contain math symbols, or other symbols that are not contained in the input codepage (symbol set) for the virtual printer. The procedure is similar to what you would do for any fully formatted file, but might vary slightly for just the math characters.

This document applies at all levels of AIX.

Printing the Symbols

To print one of these formatted files, one needs to either print in passthrough mode (_d=p), or to turn off codepage translation with (_X=). With _X=(nothing) make sure you hit enter directly after the = from 'lsvirprt' change menu.

Some math symbols like 1/2 1/4 + - * / are part of standard symbol sets, and to use these you will not have to take these precautions. However, symbols like the DEL symbol, or the integration symbol, square root symbol and the general SET operation symbols are not universally available. The list of the characters in a symbol set can usually be found in the printer technical reference manual.

To illustrate the problem you can generate a sample test PCL file as follows using vi. To generate the ESC character from the vi insert mode, hit Ctrl-v then ESC. You can generate a particular character in insert mode with the HFT (X-terminal) by holding the ALT key down, and then entering the 3 digit ASCII code in the right hand keypad. These characters appear in this document as [###]. This example uses the PS MATH Symbol Set. The PCL command to enter this symbol set is ESC(5M. Other Math and symbol sets and the PCL command to enter these modes are:

PS Math
ESC(5M
Venturea Math
ESC(6M
Math-8
ESC(8M
Wingdings
ESC(579L
Symbol
ESC(19M
Individual Laser Printers will support some or all of the preceding symbol sets.

The ESC character shows as ^[ in vi and this document shows it that way. The carriage return is ^M and is used since some passthrough virtual printers (AIX 3.2) don't tell the printer to add carriage returns. The ^[(8M tells the printer to return to a text symbol set - Roman 8. 

     Omega:   ^[(5M[087]^[(8U ^M 
     Phi:     ^[(5M[089]^[(8U ^M
     Del      ^[(5M[209]^[(8U ^M
     Approx:  ^[(5M[064]^[(8U ^M
     Set Symbols:    ^[(5M[199][200][201][202][203][204][205][206][207]^[(8U  ^M
     Square root:    ^[(5M[214]9 [222] 3 ^[(8U ^M
     Integral:       ^[(5M[242]^[(8Uf(x) ^M
     Equivalencies:  ^[(5M[185][186][187][163]=[216]^[(8U ^M
Steps to test the results:
  1. Print the file normally with the virtual printer.
  2. Print the file with: qprt -dp math.sym -Ppclqueu.
  3. Change the _X attribute in the virtual printer to IBM-815, ISO8859-1, ISO8859-2, and to [nothing}, _X= hitting enter immediately after the _X. Do not use -dp for this test.
  4. Compare the results.

Printing PCL Math Symbols with AIX Virtual Printers: AIX Printer Tips: mathsym.html ITEM: FAX
Dated: 99/01/29~00:00 Category: zap
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