Q:
ABSTRACT: PSF for AIX: Use of resident Simplified Chinese fonts
on a 3130
SEARCH ARG: psfaix
TOPIC THREAD: PRINT
PSF/AIX
..
I have a customer who wants to print Simplified Chinese font on the
3130-03S using the resident fonts (FC 4802).
After I finished the PSF/AIX installation, I've not been able to
find the appropriate values for the environment variables LANG and
PSFDBLANG for Simplified Chinese usage. Can you help?
By the way, do you also have any other advice for using the resident
fonts?
A:
Hello, in response to your questions:
PSFDBLANG
=========
The PSFDBLANG environment variable is used by the db2afp transform;
however, the db2afp transform does not support Simplified Chinese.
That's why there is no Simplified Chinese PSFDBLANG value. In order to
print Simplified Chinese with PSF for AIX, you will need to use acif
rather than db2afp. Please refer to HONE FLASH 9449 (document G107034)
for information on "Double-Byte and "Multi-Byte Character Support for
PSF/6000 R2". Although that document is a bit out of date and does not
refer specifically to Simplified Chinese, it should provide you with
some helpful information on using acif and the AIX iconv command.
One complication is that acif on AIX does not yet support the use of
outline fonts, so you will not be able to use a pagedef that calls for
an outline font. There should be a PTF available shortly that will
enable acif to support outline fonts. In the meantime, you can specify
the Simplified Chinese resident raster 240-pel fonts.
LANG
====
For the setting of the LANG variable, it depends upon what codepage
the customer wants to use. If they set LANG to zh_CN, any data they
create or display will be in the EUC code page. If they set LANG to
ZH_CN, they'll use the Unicode code page. I don't have a
recommendation on which is better, but EUC may be more widespread.
For printing, however, it shouldn't matter what LANG is set to. The
setting of the LANG variable does not affect PSF's core function of
printing data (although the setting of the LANG variable will affect
values specified for the iconv program mentioned in FLASH 9449). The
developer of this portion of PSF for AIX has successfully printed both
variations of Chinese, as well as Korean and Japanese under the En_US
locale.
USE OF RESIDENT FONTS
=====================
PSF/AIX added support of resident DBCS fonts earlier this year through
two PTFs: APAR IX57196 for the code and APAR IX57517 for the updated
man pages for the new "cfu" command (described below). In order to use
resident DBCS fonts with PSF for AIX, the customer must use the "cfu"
program ("Coded Font Utility") to mark font sections as "use resident".
The developer recommends that you mark all your fonts for resident
activation. There is no penalty in doing so since PSF for AIX will
only download a font if it is unable to activate the printer resident
fonts.
I have included the text of the cfu man page below. This is all the
information I currently have, but if you have additional questions,
I would be glad to contact the developer of this section of PSF for
AIX for information or clarification.
***********************************************************************
cfu Command
Purpose
cfu, the Coded Font Utility, displays and builds coded fonts for
use with PSF for AIX. (The emulator may distort some of the
characters in the syntax diagram below; if so, try "man cfu".)
Syntax
cfu .-d | -b. ..
Description
The main purpose of the cfu command is to allow users of double-byte
raster fonts to indicate which font sections in the coded font
should be downloaded to the printer and which font sections can be
found resident in the printer. This is useful when you have added
user-defined characters to a font section or when the printer-resident
version of a font differs from the system-resident version of a font
such that you want to ensure that PSF downloads the system version.
You can also add and delete sections from the coded font and
change which character sets and code pages are referenced in the
coded font.
The cfu command can also be used to build single-byte coded fonts
by specifying a font character set name and a code page name.
You can use the cfu command in two ways:
- Provide a coded font name as input and the cfu command will
generate a build file in its own format that can later be used
as input to another cfu command that builds a coded font.
This is the display mode of the cfu command.
- Provide a build file name as input and the cfu command will
generate a coded font This is the build mode of the cfu command.
Flags
-d Display mode displays the contents of a coded font. Output is
written to stdout using the format defined below.
This is the default mode if no flag is entered.
-b Build mode builds a new coded font using the
or stdin if the is omitted. The format of the
display output is identical to the build file format, defined
below.
Build File Format:
Each non-commented line in the build file defines one repeating
group within the Coded Font Index structured field. Repeating
group definitions may not span more than one line and fields
within each line must be delimited with blanks. A '#' at the
beginning of a line indicates a comment.
A repeating group definition has the following format:
Field 1 is the section identifier of the repeating group. The
format is X'hh', where hh is the hexadecimal section identifier
Both the 'X' character and ''' characters are required.
Field 2 is the character set name. Only the first 8 characters
are used.
Field 3 is the code page name. Only the first 8 characters are
used.
Field 4 is the section resident indicator.
1 means use the printer-resident section if possible.
0 means download that section.
Note: This field is only meaningful for double-byte raster font
Example:
# SectId CharSet CodePage Resident
# ------ ------- -------- ------
X'41' C0Z24F41 T1Z24F41 0
Note: When in build mode, the on the command
line will also be the internal coded font name on the Begin
Coded Font structured field.
The name of the coded font for display mode or the new coded font
name in build mode. cfu will not overwrite existing coded fonts
in build mode.
The input file used to build a new coded font in the format
defined above. If is omitted, cfu reads from
stdin.
Examples
1. To display the contents of the coded font X0Z24F, enter:
cfu X0Z24F or cfu -d X0Z24F
2. To build a new coded font with the name X0Z24F using build file
X0Z24F.bld, enter:
cfu -b X0Z24F X0Z24F.bld
Implementation Specifics
This command is part of PSF for AIX and is installed with the
psf.base option.
Files
/usr/lpp/psf/bin/cfu
Related Information
See Font Object Content Architecture Reference for more information
on coded font structured fields.
**********************************************************************
The resident fonts are referenced at the printer by GCSGID and FGID.
PSF for AIX uses inline GRID tables to map character sets and codepages
to the comparable GCSGID, CPGID and FGID values that the printer uses.
A comparison of the 3130 Introduction and Planning Guide (G544-3974)
shows that there are four Simplified Chinese 240-pel raster fonts
available on the 3130, and that they are mapped in the inline GRID
tables in /usr/lpp/psf/grd as follows.
For mapping character sets to FGID AND GCSGID:
FCS NAME FGID GCSGID WIDTH VSIZE ATTR
C0G16P41 53815 937 96 96 - # PRC 16x16 Gothic Section
C0S26P41 54327 937 144 144 - # PRC 24x24 Song Section
C0S32P41 54327 937 192 192 - # PRC 28x28 Song Section
C0S40P41 54327 937 240 240 - # PRC 36x36 Song Section
To map the codepage to the CPGID at the printer:
CODEPAGE CPGID GCSGID
T1G16P41 837 - # PRC/C Font Section 41
T1S26P41 837 - # PRC/C Font Section 41
T1S32P41 837 - # PRC/C Font Section 41
T1S40P41 837 - # PRC 36X36 Song Section 41
Once the PTF for ACIF for AIX that permits use of outline fonts
becomes available, you will then be able to use the 3130 in either
240-pel or 300-pel mode with the list of outline fonts listed in
Appendix A of the 3130 Introduction and Planning Guide. Use of the
GRID files is described in the PSF/AIX Print Administration manual
(S544-3817-03) beginning on page 366.
IMPORTANT¢
==========
Please make sure to order and install the latest maintenance for PSF
for AIX Version 2. Support for DBCS resident fonts in base PSF for
AIX was added in APAR IX55767; the current cumulative PTF number is
U446180. The open APAR against ACIF for support of outline fonts as
described above is PN89594.
I should also mention the AFP Font Collection: Chinese, Japanese, and
Korean (CJK) Support, announcement letter 296-060, product number
5648-113. You can use this to create additional raster fonts if the
existing resident rasters are not sufficient, or if at some point
you wish to generate other outline fonts. Note that you will need the
International Fonts and Program feature to get the IBM CJK outline
fonts.
| The current version of the AFP Font Collection as of December 11,
| 1998 is 5648-B45, announced September 8, 1998. US announcement
| letter number is 298-314.
I hope this helps.
October 14, 1996
| Additional information added November 12, 1998.
S e a r c h - k e y w o r d s:
psf/6000 psf/aix psf aix dbcs simplified chinese fonts d2afp
WWQA: ITEM: RTA000100316 ITEM: RTA000100316
Dated: 11/1998 Category: XPSF6000
This HTML file was generated 99/06/24~12:43:33
Comments or suggestions?
Contact us