Printing in another language

[dansdaduk]

One of my printers (LaserJet M475dn) supports the Koufi and Nask fonts, although it doesn't appear to support the 11N symbol set.

I've verified that It does support the 8V, 9V and 10V symbol sets with the Koufi font; for example: 

The attached .zip file contains four test print files (one each for the four referenced symbol sets).

If you 'send' the content of each of these files direct to the printer port of your printer, you can check how it handles them.

Assuming that the device is network-connected, the easiest way to do this (from a Windows workstation) is to use the 'lpr' command in a command-prompt session; for example:

lpr  -S ip-address  -P any capture_Koufi_8V.prn

where 'ip-address' is the TCP/IP address of the target device.

You may need to enable certain Windows 'features' in order to make the 'lpr' command available.

[userid3]

dansdaduk,

On my usb hp laserjet pro 400 401dne printer it only has Naskh and Koufi.  I don't know how to tell what symbols it has or works with.  When I printed Arabic characters showed as symbols on the paper.

I then connected printer HP Laserjet P3005dn as a network printer.  It has Naskh, Koufi and Ryadh.  When I printed it printed the Arabic characters correctly on the paper.

Does that mean I need PCL Ryadh or is it more related to the symbol sets.  Sorry I don't really understand all of this.  What would be my next steps?

[userid3]

dansdaduk,

My printer is a usb printer and i did print to a couple network printers (HP P3005dn and Xerox 7855i) and it worked but just doesn't work on my usb printer.  How do I verify what symbol sets work with what font?

[dansdaduk]

>> ... How do I verify what symbol sets work with what font? ...

With difficulty.

However, I'd expect that if the printer has printer-resident Koufi and Naskh fonts (both fixed-pitch fonts, by the way), then these fonts will support the 8V, 9V and 10V symbol sets (bit perhaps not the 11N one).

Without knowing a great deal more about how your printing mechanism works, it is difficult for me to provide more pertinent advice.

From what you've stated before, I assume that you are 'printing' from AS400, via a Windows workstation, to a local USB-connected printer.

I know little about AS400, but I've always assumed that when printing from such systems to a LaserJet device:

• The AS400 printing system generates a 'printer-ready' print job (almost certainly using the PCL5 Page Description Language); so this 'job' would already include the necessary font selection sequence(s) - how that is achieved, I have no idea.
• If the target device is network-connected, the AS400 system 'sends' the content of that print job direct to the TCP/IP port of the device. 
• If the target device is USB-connected to a Windows workstation, the AS400 system 'sends' the content of that print job to the workstation, nominating the target printer via its Windows name on that workstation, and indicating that the job should be printed in 'pass-through' mode (i.e. that the Windows driver makes no changes to the received data before forwarding it to the target printer port).

[userid3]

Thanks for you assistance.

I will continue to troubleshoot.

[Copier-Pro]

I will try.Have you tried different code pages.I remember that on the AS400 sometimes this makes a big difference.Try Codepage 437  might just solve the problem.Hope this will help.

[Copier-Pro]

I will try.Have you tried different code pages.I remember that on the AS400 sometimes this makes a big difference.Try Codepage 437  might just solve the problem.Hope this will help.

[userid3]

No haven't tried code page 437 but did use 420 with graphic character set 235 since Arabic.

[dansdaduk]

I don't think that CodePage 437 will help you at all - it is the MS-DOS "extended ASCII" character set - it doesn't include any Arabic characters at all.

CodePage 420 appears to be one of the IBM EBCDIC Latin/Arabic character sets; note that it uses an EBCDIC encoding, rather than an ASCII encoding.

So, for example, the character "A" (Uppercase Latin A), is encoded as hexadecimal  C1, whereas in standard ASCII encodings, A will be represented by  hexadecimal  41. 

I've no idea what "graphic character set 235" is.