unable to print PCL chinese font, always print Korean

[Steven_Tsai]

Dear Support

I was trying to print the chinese font from PCL commands

it prints only korean, regardless what font type I have assigned 

I have already assigned the code into <esc>(18N<esc>(s1pXXv0s0b17007T

my printer is M602n, it comes with Disk Resident Fonts Japanese, Korean, T- Chinese, S- Chinese

Can anyone please help ?

Thanks,

[dansdaduk · Accepted solution]

I don't have access to a LaserJet M602n printer, so don't know much about its capabilities.

Substituting 12 for the XX point size in your skeleton PCL escape sequence:

<Esc>(18N         Primary Font: Symbol Set (18N = Unicode)
<Esc>(s1p         Primary Font: Spacing: Proportional
       12v        Primary Font: Height (12 points)
       0s         Primary Font: Style (Upright, solid)
       0b         Primary Font: Stroke Weight: Medium
       17007T     Primary Font: Typeface (identifier = 17007)

shows that you are selecting a font:

• Which supports the 18N (= Unicode) symbol set; all printer resident unbound scalable encapsulated TrueType fonts should theoretically therefore be candidates.
• Which is proportionally-spaced and available in the selected point size. 
• With typeface identifier 17007 - I've no idea whether or not this is a printer-resident font on the M602 model.

However, to select characters with character codes outside of the single-byte 0x20->0xff range using Unicode code-points (of necessity two-bytes or more, since they are larger than 0xff), you also have to select the appropriate Text Parsing Mode; for Unicode this would be:

<Esc>&t83P        Text Parsing Method: UTF-8

The required code-points then have to be specified using the (two-byte or more) UTF-8 encoding of the Unicode code-point values (so, for example, U+100 would be encoded as 0xc480); I don't know, off-hand, which Unicode sub-ranges are used for Chinese language characters.

There are other values of the Text Parsing Mode sequence to select, but I'm not very familiar with any of them:

<Esc>&t0P   Text Parsing Method: 1-byte
<Esc>&t1P   Text Parsing Method: 1-byte
<Esc>&t2P   Text Parsing Method: 2-byte
<Esc>&t21P  Text Parsing Method: 1|2-byte Asian 7bit
<Esc>&t31P  Text Parsing Method: 1|2-byte Shift-JIS
<Esc>&t38P  Text Parsing Method: 1|2-byte Asian 8bit

which can be used with some other Asian symbol sets (if the printer supports them), but I don't know the details off-hand.

[dansdaduk]

... and if the fonts are disk-resident, then:

• You may need to use something like the Alphanumeric ID escape sequence, with appropriate associated data, to load the required disk-resident font into the printer's volatile memory.
• You need to ascertain if these fonts are bound to a particular symbol set, or are unbound (in which case the font must have the correct Character Complement bits set in its header).

[Steven_Tsai]

Hi dansdaduk,

thanks for the exlaintation, I was printing with chinese font card, the primary font set started with

<Esc>(18C

and the printer font set is now 

<Esc>(18N 

do I need to change my chinese character from ASCII coding into UNICODE?

[Steven_Tsai]

do you know how should I input the characters?

I used to input character like this 

空腹血ç³

how can I input them with for precise method like 

passing UTF code number 0xc480

[Dage]

Can someone help me set up Chinese character using strokes, instead of pinyin? I have a MacBook but using Microsoft Word. Apple staff can't help to figure out how to use Chinese characters. Hence, I am seeking help from this community.

[dansdaduk]

@Steven_Tsai

>> ... do I need to change my chinese character from ASCII coding into UNICODE? ...

I'm not sure exactly what you mean by this - the ASCII coded-character set is (strictly) a 7-bit set, and only contains 128 characters (33 of which are non-graphic control-codes), and does not include any Chinese or Korean characters at all.

What I suspect you mean is that you are currently using something like the Simplified Chinese GB-2312-80 coded character set (18C, I think, in terms of HP symbol sets), which is a mixed 1-byte/2-byte character set with a particular encoding - I think that the relevant Text Parsing Method is probably 38 (1- or 2- byte Asian 8-bit) .

If you want to use the Unicode symbol set (with Text Parsing Method 83) you'd have to translate all of your existing data to the Unicode encoding.

>> ... I used to input character like this ç©ºè…¹è¡€ç³

>> ... how can I input them with for precise method like passing UTF code number 0xc480

The character view is presumably how your application is decoding the characters as a byte stream; the 'UTF code number' shown in the example is merely the (much more precise) hexadecimal encoding of the multiple bytes which define one of those characters.

[dansdaduk]

@Dage

>> ... Can someone help me set up Chinese character using strokes, instead of pinyin? ...

I certainly can't.

To get more responses, you should start a new question (using the Post new question button), although I don't really know which would be the relevant discussion board to post it in, sorry.