Odd FilePRO Question

[Bob Rasmussen]

It's true that Print Wizard (my product) can be used to print Chinese 
and many other scripts (languages). Sticking to the printing aspect of 
this for a minute, in Filepro, you could store the Chinese text in UTF-8 
mode. Alter a printcode file (some HP PCL .PRT file) to have a "start 
Chinese font" printcode, and use it. After printing the Chinese, you would 
have to use a new start-font code and also a horizontal positioning code 
-- the Chinese text will take a width different from the number of bytes.

If you want to DISPLAY this text on the screen, that's another can of 
worms. If it's stored as UTF-8, I believe filePro will display it either 
as a string of garbage characters (the default), or properly in Chinese 
(if your terminal emulator can run in UTF-8 mode, such as Anzio can), but 
the width it occupies on the screen will be wrong.

If you want to INPUT Chinese directly into filePro, you'll need to use a 
terminal emulator that can deal with UTF-8 encoding. Again, Anzio can do 
this, including pasting from the clipboard.

In practical terms, I'd suggest you try printing but not displaying or 
inputting.

Other notes:

1) Everything I said about Chinese would be true about most other 
languages as well. But don't try Arabic or Farsi, which go right to left.

2) Printed Chinese can be "traditional" or "simplified". (Spoken Chinese 
can be Cantonese or Mandarin).

3) The printcode to "start Chinese" doesn't actually have to choose a font 
(typeface). Print Wizard can do automatic font selection.

4) Some HP (and other) PCL-5 printers can print Chinese using built-in 
fonts. It might be possible to implement a system of printcodes that would 
work with either Print Wizard or directly to the printer.

5) Print Wizard could also convert printed output to PDF.

6) I can not promise to support Print Wizard forever.

On Wed, 16 Feb 2022, Laura Brody via Filepro-list wrote:

> I couldn't think of the name of the program, so I dug around. Printwizard
> was the program.
> <https://www.anzio.com/content/print-wizard>
>
> Many filePro developers have used this program for many years. Highly
> recommended
>
> Laura Brody
>
> On Wed, Feb 16, 2022 at 4:55 PM laura.k.brody <laura.k.brody at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> To clarify, the Chinese characters appear on invoice lines, not just at
>> the heading area like a logo image?
>>
>>
>> You would have to have a filepro file with one field of english
>> description and a gif or other graphic file of the chinese image. You could
>> use a blob or just a filename path to the image file.
>>
>> There are a couple of programs that would allow you to print the images in
>> the invoice.
>>
>> Laura Brody
>>
>>
>> Sent from my Verizon, Samsung Galaxy smartphone
>>
>>
>> -------- Original message --------
>> From: Frank Gemeinhardt via Filepro-list <filepro-list at lists.celestial.com>
>>
>> Date: 2/16/22 4:45 PM (GMT-05:00)
>> To: filepro-list at lists.celestial.com
>> Subject: Odd FilePRO Question
>>
>> *I have a prospective customer who insists on printing Chinese characters
>> on his invoices.  The vocabulary is limited to names of produce items.   I
>> am at a total loss. *
>>
>> *Has anyone encountered such a request before?*
>> *Server is linux*
>>
>> *Regards*
>> *Frank Gemeinhardt*
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Regards,
....Bob Rasmussen,   President,   Rasmussen Software, Inc.

personal e-mail: ras at anzio.com
  company e-mail: rsi at anzio.com
           voice: (US) 503-624-0360 (9:00-6:00 Pacific Time)
             fax: (US) 503-624-0760
             web: http://www.anzio.com
  street address: Rasmussen Software, Inc.         NEW ADDRESS AS OF AUGUST 1, 2020
                  8835 SW Canyon Lane, Suite 401
                  Portland, OR  97225  USA