If you are restricted to printing through a UNIX host spooler only, and cannot use a SAPWIN or SWINCF Windows printing solution, then there are a number of requirements to print non-Latin1 characters. In the following example for Chinese, you need to observe all of the following points, or else the non-Latin1 characters will appear as # on the printout.
To print Chinese or other CJK (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) and foreign languages through Unix, check the following points:
- The correct language must be set in the form you are printing (ZH for Chinese). This provides the correct codepage which is required by SAP system.
- The printer must be capable of printing the Chinese characters. This is usually done by installing a special DIMM module which contains these characters in the printer as per note 423003. This DIMM module looks like a RAM module that slots into the printer. You can also use a Unicode printer which has the unicode fonts installed (although Unicode printers are fairly rare).
- You must use the correct device type (CNHPLJ4 for Chinese), also as per note 423003. A standard PCL device type such as HPLJ4 will not work to print CJK characters.
- You must use the correct font for the language, as per note 776507. (you can use font CNSONG for Chinese)
- An alternative option which may also provide the desired results, if you have a PostScript printer you can try using device type CNSPOST as per note 83502. In my case I was not using a PS printer, but this is another possibilty.
Here are the links to the notes I referenced, mentioned above:
423003 - Printers and Asian/East European typeface/languages
776507 - SAPscript/SmartForms: Which fonts for which languages?
83502 - Printing Support for Native Languages
- Of course, to print through Windows on a Unicode system (either Windows print server or simply Windows front-end PC with access method G), you can use device type SWINCF which provides a much simpler solution, see note 812821. With cascading fonts, SAP checks each character, and the font is dynamically changed to the appropriate font for each char in the text.
812821 - Cascading Font settings
