AIX Printer Tips: Printing Line Drawing - Box Characters in AIX

At AIX Version 3.2.5, lines and boxes tend to print just like other ASCII characters. At AIX Version 4.1 and above, they print like symbols or not at all. This document describes how to print ASCII line drawing characters at all levels of AIX Version 4.

This document applies at all levels of AIX 4.

• The default codepage (symbol set) for AIX 4 is the ISO standard ISO-8859-1. This codepage does not have these line drawing characters defined.

• The default codepage for AIX 3 was IBM-850, which did have the line drawing characters defined.

The key is to print with the virtual printer attribute _X=IBM-850, or qprt -XIBM-850.

Because browsers may not display all the characters, you may not be able to see this, but in codepage 850 this is surrounded by a box.

  ÚÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ¿
  ³ Box Test  ³
  ³ Cent ½    ³
  ÀÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÙ

If you print this text (or the source of this document) with "qprt -X IBM-850" it will print a box to most ASCII printers.

To change the virtual printer, follow these steps:

1. lsvirprt
2. Choose the printer.
3. From input line enter:

     X=IBM-850