8.    Thai Printing Support

This chapter introduces the Thai printing support provided by the Tru64 UNIX operating system. It describes the supported printers, the print file formats, printing features, and the maintenance procedures for supporting Thai printing.

8.1    Supported Printers

The Tru64 UNIX operating system supports text printers with built-in Thai fonts. The Thai text printing support follows the Wototo (WTT) specification. The Tru64 UNIX operating system supports Thai printing on PostScript printers in three ways:

• Using the built-in or downloaded fonts installed in printers
• Using the font faulting mechanism for certain PostScript printers, which is explained in Section 8.3.

• Using the wwpsof print filter

For information on the supported printer types and print filters, see Chapter 4, Local Language Devices.

8.2    Print File Formats

The Tru64 UNIX operating system supports printing of mixed ASCII and Thai characters in the following print file formats:

• Plain text files on text printers and PostScript printers
• Files with nroff control sequences (for printing with underline, superscript, subscript and bold attributes) on text printers and PostScript printers
• PostScript files on PostScript printers

The print filters for PostScript printers can automatically detect the format of a print file and convert it to the proper format for printing.

8.3    Printing Features

The Tru64 UNIX operating system supports the printing features described in the following sections.

8.3.1    Font Faulting

Font faulting is a mechanism for saving memory required by fonts. With font faulting, font information is stored in either:

• The secondary storage of a supporting host machine, called a font-faulting server
• An internal font disk

The font information is loaded into the printer on demand, thus conserving printer memory.

The font-faulting mechanism is useful in a desktop printing environment, where a large number of different fonts is required. In this case, simultaneously storing all the fonts reduces the available memory, and therefore speed, of the printer. It is also possible that the number of required fonts is so large that all fonts cannot be stored in memory at the same time.

Font faulting for single-byte fonts is done on a per font basis. Single-byte fonts are small and relatively simple, so loading the whole font is efficient.

The font-faulting mechanism can be used with the following printers:

• DEClaser 1152
• DEClaser 5100
• PrintServer 17

See Section 8.5, Setting Up Thai Printing for information about configurating these printers.

8.3.2    Font Preloading

The generic wwpsof PostScript filter preloads the font data required by a print job, along with the print job itself, to the printer. Therefore, a job printed with the wwpsof print filter might consume more printer memory and print slower than a job printed using the font faulting mechanism. However, using the wwpsof printer allows you to print Thai characters on all available PostScript printers rather than just a few. See Section 8.5, Setting Up Thai Printing, for more information about configuring the wwpsof filter.

8.3.3    Outline Fonts

The Tru64 UNIX operating system provides a large set of outline fonts for printing files in various languages. Depending on how many local language support subsets are installed on your system, more than 150 outline fonts may be available.

The outline font for Thai printing is described in detail in Chapter 5.

8.3.4    Printer ID for DOT Matrix Printers

Different Thai dot matrix printers may support different internal codes for Thai printing. To ensure the internal code of a printer can be set up correctly, you must specify the printer ID (that is, the model and brand registration ID) through the yp parameter in the /etc/printcap file. The format of printer ID follows the WTT specification:

[bb][mm][nn]

where

bb is the Brand ID representing the brand name of the printer

mm is the Model ID representing its model number

nn is the Printer Code ID specifying the internal character code

The details of the registered printer ID can be found in the WTT specification.

For each supported printer code, a mapping table is provided to convert the print file code to the printer codes. The code conversion tables are stored in the following location:

/usr/lbin/tac_data/tac11xnn.cod

where nn is one of the valid Printer Code IDs.

8.3.5    Control Sequence for Dot Matrix Printers

To support the printing of text files with nroff control sequences on a Thai dot matrix printer, the generic text print filter, thailpof, reads the printer description table of the printer and generates the appropriate control sequences. Printer description tables are stored in the following location:

/usr/lbin/tac_data/bbmm.tab

where bb is the Brand ID and mm is the Model ID.

Alternatively, you can specify other character code tables by passing the
tacdata=<tac data path> option to the lpr command through the -A flag.

A printer description table describes the escape sequences used by the printer for printing with the underline, superscript, and subscript attributes. Each line in this table contains an escape sequence name, as defined in Table 8-1, and its escape sequence code (in hexadecimal). Comments can be added to the table by entering an exclamation mark (!) as the first character in the line.

!++
! printer table : /usr/lbin/tac_data/epb4.tab
! description :escape sequences table for Epson LQ1050+
!-
subscript       1B 53 31 ! ESC S 1
x_subscript     1B 54    ! ESC T
superscript     1B 53 30 ! ESC S 0
x_superscript   1B 54    ! ESC T
underline       1B 31    ! ESC 1
x_underline     1B 30    ! ESC 0
reset           1B 40    ! ESC @

Table 8-1: Escape Sequence Names

8.3.6    Printing Enhancement Rules (Text Morphing)

Under certain circumstances, when standard above vowels or tone marks are combined with other Thai characters, they may overlap each other or there may be too much space between them.

To support the printing of high quality Thai documents, the Thai outline fonts are specially encoded to include a supplementary set of above vowels and tone marks, in addition to those defined in TIS 620-2533. The printing position of these additional characters is slightly adjusted to handle the spacing problems of certain combinations of Thai characters. During printing, the above vowels or tone marks defined in TIS 620-2533 are mapped, according to rules, to appropriate characters in the supplementary set, resulting in better print quality. This technology is called text morphing.

To enable the text morphing capability, you specify the tm option to the lpr command through the -A flag.

As there is currently no standard way of text morphing, the set of rules supported by the Tru64 UNIX operating system applies only to Thai fonts shipped by HP. If you use Thai fonts from other vendors, carefully verify the output from the print queue with text morphing before making the printer available to all users.

8.3.7    Space Compensating

Many English character-cell terminal applications cannot properly handle non-spaced Thai characters. The problem is severe when Thai text needs to be aligned in columns with spaces between them. The space compensating mode addresses this problem. For details, see Section 9.2.8, Thai Character Output.

The Tru64 UNIX operating system supports space compensating mode for printing Thai text files. By default, the space compensating mode is disabled.

To enable the space compensating mode for printing, you can specify the spcom option to the lpr command by using the -A flag.

8.3.8    Half-Height Printing

For those Thai text printers which support three-pass printing, Thai characters of different display levels are printed on three separate lines. The Tru64 UNIX operating system allows you to print the three output levels in a more compact region, occupying only 1.5 lines. This is called half-height printing.

To enable the half-height printing capability, you can specify the onehalf option to the lpr command by using the -A flag.

8.4    Commands and Daemons

Before you configure printers to utilize the printing features supported by the Tru64 UNIX operating system, you should understand some commands and daemons used in print configuration. This section discusses them in detail; the next section illustrates how they are used for configuration.

8.4.1    Country-Specific Options to the lpr command

In addition to the usual options to the lpr command, the -A option is added to pass the country-specific parameters. You can also use ya to set these parameters in the /etc/printcap file. For example, the parameters can be specified with the -A option as:

% lpr -A "flocale=th_TH font=LilyUPC-Light plocale=th_TH" <file>

The same set of parameters, when defined in the /etc/printcap file appear as follows:

:ya="flocale=th_TH font=LilyUPC-Light plocale=th_TH":\

If you supply parameters using the-A option to the lpr command, they override the corresponding default values in the /etc/printcap file.

The following parameters are applicable to Thai printing:

• flocale=<any valid locale>

• plocale=<any valid locale>

• font=<supported outline font>

• spcom

• tm

• onehalf

• tacdata=<tac data path>

• line=<number of lines>

8.4.2    PostScript Font Management Utility (pfsetup)

A PostScript font management utility, pfsetup, is provided for setting up print queues to use the font faulting mechanism. This utility has the following syntax:

pfsetup [-s] [-d] [queue_name...]

The options to the pfsetup command are defined as follows:

• The -s (setup mode) option allows you to setup lists of fonts to be downloaded.
• The -d (download mode) option downloads fonts to printers according to the lists prepared with the -s option.

If you do not specify an option, pfsetup displays the information about the print queues that have been set up with this utility. If you do not specify a particular queue name, pfsetup processes every applicable queue.

In setup mode, pfsetup displays all PostScript printer fonts available on the system and prompts you to select the fonts or font headers to be downloaded onto individual print queues. For example:

% /usr/sbin/pfsetup -s

======================================================

Printer queue: lp1 | 1 | d11152W

No font has been setup for downloading in queue lp1

These are fonts available in your system for downloading. Fonts
chosen for downloading are marked with *

1 Hei-Light-CNS11643                      2 Sung-Light-CNS11643
3 Hei-GB2312-80                           4 XiSong-GB2312-80
5 Munjo                                   6 AngsanaUPC-Bold@
7 AngsanaUPC-BoldItalic@                  8 AngsanaUPC-Italic
9 AngsanaUPC-Light                       10 CordiaUPC-Bold
11 CordiaUPC-BoldItalic                  12 CordiaUPC-Italic
13 CordiaUPC-Light                       14 EucrosiaUPC-Bold
15 EucrosiaUPC-BoldItalic                16 EucrosiaUPC-Italic
17 EucrosiaUPC-Light                     18 FreesiaUPC-Bold
19 FreesiaUPC-BoldItalic                 20 FreesiaUPC-Italic
21 FreesiaUPC-Light                      22 IrisUPC-Bold
23 IrisUPC-BoldItalic                    24 IrisUPC-Italic
25 IrisUPC-Light                         26 JasmineUPC-Bold

[C]ontinue | [S]etup | [L]ist fonts | [Q]uit | [N]ext queue <C>

In this example, the action keys are defined as follows:

Key	Action
[C]ontinue	Display a further font listing
[S]etup	Proceed to setup
[L]ist fonts	List fonts again
[Q]uit	Quit pfsetup
[N]ext queue	Proceed to the next queue

If you choose the s option, the following prompt is displayed:

[A]dd fonts | [R]emove fonts | [L]ist fonts | [Q]uit |
[N]ext queue <N>

In response to the prompt, you can enter a to add fonts to or r to delete fonts from the list for a print queue. The fonts that you select will be highlighted with an asterisk (*) at the end of the font names.

Note

The fonts on this list vary according to the language variants that are installed on your system.

To download the fonts selected in setup mode, you can use the pfsetup utility with the -d option.

8.4.3    Font Faulting Daemon (ffd)

Font faulting requests from a PostScript printer with the two channel approach, such as a DEClaser 1152, require that the font faulting daemon, ffd, be running on your system. When the ffd daemon receives a font data request, it extracts the required font glyph data from the specified font and sends it to the printer through the secondary channel. The ffd daemon ensures that all fonts in the font faulting server are available to the printer.

If you configure a print queue that makes use of the two channel approach, or if you modify the secondary channel of a print queue, you must restart the font faulting daemon.

To restart the font faulting daemon, you must log in as root and stop the existing font faulting daemon by entering the following command:

% /sbin/init.d/ffserver stop

To start the font faulting daemon, you can enter:

% /sbin/init.d/ffserver

8.4.4    PrintServer Printing Command (wwlpspr)

To fully utilize the features of PrintServer 17 such as two-sided printing and multiple pages per side, it is necessary to use the lpspr command provided by the PrintServer Software Version 5.0 or higher for Tru64 UNIX. This command, however, does not provide features such as locales and fonts for printing text files. To facilitate printing files to PrintServer 17, a unified wwlpspr command is provided in the Tru64 UNIX operating system.

The wwlpspr command is a front end program to parse the parameters passed by users and then call different commands such as print filter, lpr, and lpspr with the appropriate command, thus provides a unified interface.

For the detailed information on the wwlpspr, refer to wwlpspr(1).

8.5    Setting Up Thai Printing

This section describes how to set up the following printers:

• Thai Epson LQ1050+
• Declaser 1152
• DEClaser 5100
• Printserver 17
• PostScript printers using wwpsof filter

8.5.1    Thai Epson LQ1050+

To configure the Thai Epson LQ1050+ dot matrix printer:

1. Invoke lprsetup and select the epl050+ printer.

   lprsetup ep1050+

   The following prompt is displayed:

   Do you print nonAscii characters on the
   flag pages? [n]
   

2. Answer y if you want to print Thai characters on the flag pages and n if you do not. The data printed on the flag page includes the file names, user login name, date, and son on. If you are using Thai characters in these values, you should answer y. In this case, the flag page is printed in more than one page, because every character will occupy 1.5 or 3 lines depending on whether or not half-height printing is enabled.

   The following prompt is displayed:

   Do you want to print every Thai character
   in 1.5 lines spacing instead of 3
   lines in 3 pass mode? [n]

3. Answer y if you want to enable half-height printing and n if you do not.
4. To change other default settings, modify the ya capability after the prompt:

   Enter symbol name:

   In response to the prompt:

   Enter a new value for symbol 'ya'? 
   ["plocale=th_TH"]

   input the new values. Please do not forget the double quote around the parameters, and copy the values found in the previous prompt

5. You can modify the following options:

   • spcom -- You can define that the queue always enable space compensation mode. This is not advisable, however, because users cannot disable it.

   • tacdata -- If you want to define your own control sequence or internal code for this printer, you can use this option to point to your own path.

To print Thai text files on this printer, use the lpr command.

The thailpof printer filter is generic enough for most dot matrix printers. You can use the preceding procedure to configure another dot matrix printer by defining the appropriate yp value. For advanced tuning, refer to the previous sections on how to define the control sequences and internal codes.

8.5.2    DEClaser 1152

The DEClaser 1152 printer can be used to print Thai characters by using the font faulting mechanism with two communications channels. One channel is for normal data and the second channel is for font faulting data. See Figure 8-1.

Figure 8-1: Two-channel Communication of the Font Faulting Mechanism

Font faulting requires 4M bytes of printer memory. If your DEClaser 1152 printer has only 2M bytes of memory, you must install the LN07X-UF memory board to provide the additional 2M bytes of memory. Refer to the printer manual for installing the LN07X-UF memory board.

You also need to establish one and only one system to be the font-faulting server for the printer. This server sends font information to the printer through a secondary communication interface, or channel. The printer's secondary channel connection to the font-faulting server can be made through either a local port or a Local Area Transport (LAT) port. If the connection is through a LAT port, make sure that no other applications or hosts are using that port.

An 8 pin Din to 6 Pos MMJ Adapter (part number: -H8584-AB) is needed to convert the Apple-talk interface on the printer to be the secondary channel used by the font-faulting mechanism. The baud rate of the secondary interface should match the value of the $BAUD parameter in the /sbin/init.d/ffserver file. By default, this value is 9600.

To configure the DEClaser 1152 printer to print Thai files:

1. Add a printer by using the lprsetup command and select dl1152w as the printer type.
2. If this machine is the font faulting server for the printer, answer y to the following question:
   

   Do you want to configure this machine as
   font faulting server for the DEClaser
   1152 printer? One and only one font
   faulting server should be configured for
   every DEClaser 1152 employing font
   faulting mechanism. [n] 
   

   Then, enter the full path name of the port used to connect the secondary channel for the ya capability.
3. Answer y in response to the following question:
   

   Do you want to set up the printer
   codeset or default font for printing
   non-Ascii text?  If your answer is 'y',
   please consult printcap.4 for the
   parameters. *** Remember to enclose the
   parameters with a pair of double quotes. [n] 
   

   Then, type the following:
   

   "plocale=th_TH font=<any Thai font>"
   

   Refer to Chapter 5 for list of Thai outline fonts.
4. If you want to change other default values, modify the ya capability after the following prompt:
   

   Enter symbol name:

   Input the new values in response to the following prompt:

   Enter a new value for symbol 'ya'?
   ["plocale=th_TH font=LilyUPC-Light"]
   

   Remember to include the double quotation marks around the parameters, and use the same values you entered at the previous prompt.
5. You can modify the following options:
   
   
   • spcom -- You can define that the queue always enable space compensation mode. This is not advisable, however, because users cannot disable it.
     
   
   
   • tm -- You can define that the queue always enable space compensation mode. This is not advisable, however, because users cannot disable it.

6. Use the pfsetup command to download the fonts. For greatest efficiency, download the Thai font you specified in Step 3, plus any other frequently used single-byte fonts. The printer can access the fonts that are not manually downloaded, but there is overhead for dynamically downloading fonts.
7. If this machine is configured as the font-faulting host, issue the following commands to notify the font-faulting daemon about the new printer:
   

   % /sbin/init.d/ffserver stop
   % /sbin/init.d/ffserver start
   

   You need to enter these commands only after adding or modifying the printer queue. The next time the server is rebooted, the font-faulting daemon will locate the printer automatically.
8. Everytime the font-faulting server or the DEClaser 1152 is restarted, you should use the pfsetup command to download the fonts again.

For the details of the font faulting daemon and the pfsetup utility, see Section 8.4, Commands and Daemons.

To print Thai text files to print queues connected to a DEClaser 1152 printer, use the lpr command. You can override the default font setting in the /etc/printcap file by using the -A option to the lpr command.

8.5.3    DEClaser 5100

The DEClaser 5100 printer can be used to print Thai characters using the font-faulting mechanism with built-in hard disk. The model that supports the font-faulting mechanism is the LN90X-HD, which includes the 128 MB hard disk option. The printer also must have at least 6 MB of memory.

To configure the DEClaser 5100 printer to print Thai files:

1. Add a printer by using the lprsetup command and select dl5100w as the printer type.
2. Answer y in response to the following question:
   

   Do you want to set up the printer
   codeset or default font for printing
   non-Ascii text?  If your answer is 'y', 
   please consult printcap.4 for the
   parameters. *** Remember to enclose the 
   parameters with a pair of double quotes 
   [n] 
   

   Then, type the following:
   

   "plocale=th_TH font=<any Thai font>"
   

   Refer to Chapter 5 for list of Thai outline fonts.
3. If you want to change other default values, modify the ya capability after the following prompt:
   

   Enter symbol name:
   

   Input the new values in response to the following prompt:

   Enter a new value for symbol 'ya'? ["plocale=th_TH font=LilyUPC-Light"]
   

   Remember to include the double quotation marks around the parameters, and to use the same values you entered at the previous prompt.
4. You can modify the following options:
   
   
   • spcom -- You can define that the queue always enable space compensation mode. This is not advisable, however, because users cannot disable it.
     
     
   • tm -- You can define that the queue always enable text morphing. This is not advisable, however, because users cannot disable it.
5. Use the pfsetup command to download the fonts. Download all fonts that you expect the printer to need, because any fonts not manually downloaded are not accessible to the printer.
6. Downloading a font is done only once, until the font is removed or the hard disk is reformatted.

For the details of the pfsetup utility, see Section 8.4, Commands and Daemons.

To print Thai text files to print queues connected to a DEClaser 5100 printer, use the lpr command. You can override the default font setting in the /etc/printcap file by using the -A option to the lpr command.

8.5.4    PrintServer 17

The PrintServer 17 printer can be used to print Thai characters by using the font-faulting mechanism through the network. There are no special hardware requirements.

To configure the PrintServer 17 printer to print Thai files:

1. Install the PrintServer Software Version 5.0 or later for Tru64 UNIX. This is a layered product that must be purchased separately. Refer to the corresponding installation guide for installing and configuring the PrintServer software.
2. If you want to define a default printer codeset or default font to print Thai text, use the lprsetup command or manually update the /etc/printcap file to include the ya option by adding the following:
   

   :ya="plocale=th_TH font=<any Thai font>":\
   

   Refer to Chapter 5 for list of Thai outline fonts.
3. If you want to change other default values, modify the ya capability after the following prompt:
   

   Enter symbol name:
   

   Input the new values in response to the following prompt:
   

   Enter a new value for symbol 'ya'? ["plocale=th_TH font=LilyUPC-Light"]
   

   Remember to include the double quotation marks around the parameters, and use the same values you entered at the previous prompt.
4. You can modify the following options:
   
   
   • spcom-- You can define that the queue always enable space compensation mode. This is not advisable, however, because users cannot disable it.
   
   
   • tm -- You can define that the queue always enable text morphing. This is not advisable, however, because users cannot disable it.
5. Use the pfsetup command to define the fonts to be downloaded. For greatest efficiency, download the Thai font specified in Step 3, plus other frequently used fonts. The printer can access the fonts that are not manually downloaded, but there is overhead for dynamically downloading fonts.
   
   Note that the pfsetup command should be executed in the Configuration Host of the PrintServer printer. After executing the pfsetup command, restart the Management Client to enable the new configuration. Refer to the document on PrintServer Software Version 5.0 or later for Tru64 UNIX for further details.
6. To automatically download the fonts defined in Step 5, turn off the PrintServer 17 printer and then turn it on.
7. When the PrintServer 17 is restarted, the fonts will be downloaded automatically. Hence, the pfsetup command is executed once only as long as the configuration is not modified.

For the details of the pfsetup utility, see Section 8.4, Commands and Daemons.

To print Thai text files to print queues connected to a PrintServer 17 printer, use the wwlpspr command. You can override the default font setting in the /etc/printcap file by using the -A option to the wwlpspr command.

8.5.5    Using the wwpsof Filter with PostScript Printers

To configure a PostScript printer to use the wwpsof filter:

1. Invoke lprsetup or printconfig and select the wwpsof print filter.
2. Enter the printer configuration data needed to set up the print queue.
3. Define the "ya" symbol. The "plocale" option is not required unless the print queue must be configured to print only Thai data files.
4. Optionally, turn on the "spcom" and "tm" options to enable space compensation and text morphing.

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