Printing double byte lanaguage from SAP on Windows

[Former Member]

We are currently running ERP 6.0 on Iseries and can print Chinese, Korean and Japanese.   We are moving to the windows platform and are having trouble printing the double byte languages.  I have tried many different device types, but do not get the correct characters to print.  I do not know if there are language installs that need to be applied to the windows servers that SAP is running on, or if I need to install something on the Print servers.   The printer i am testing with is an HPLJ M4345 MFP.  I can print chinese to this printer from SAP on the Iseries, but not from SAP on Windows.

If you run SAP from windows and print double byte languages, let me know what I am missing.

Thanks

David

[Former Member]

Hi everyone,

We discovered another issue related to the double byte language printing.   In China we have some HPLJ5100 printers that use the Jet Direct Smart NIC.  The Unicode device type is not working for these devices.   Does anyone have any suggestions on what configuration should be used for these printers?

Thanks

David

[david_liu1]

Hello,

If you want to print e.g. Chinese characters, the printer must know how a Chinese character looks like. So there are two possibilities:

- The printer has a Chinese font module installed and knows the Chinese characters by itself.
- Somebody sends the Chinese characters e.g. as small graphics to the printer and makes them 

  available on this way.

You can check whether you can use the Cascading Font solution (device type SWINCF), which is described in SAP note 812821. It should support all Unicode characters on all printers.

If you print with device type SWINCF, you print via a Windows system and the Windows printer driver. So if you can print from Windows (e.g. from Word) on these printers, a print with device type SWINCF should work, too.

Regards,

David

[Former Member]

Problem solved.  It turned out that we only needed to specify the device type in SPAD as ZHPUTF8F : HP Unicode Device Type

We also tested in a system that we had not installed the language packs and it worked too.

Thanks for all the feedback.

David

[Former Member]

We have installed the language packs on our SAP windows servers.  I am still not getting the correct simplified chinese characters to print.   I have installed a printer on one of the SAP servers, to try and bypass the file/print server.  Even that output is not correct.  The spool display is correct.  I am wondering about the fonts at the printer, but since we can print the correct characters from the Iseries, I am thinking the font is not the issue.   Do any of you print double byte output from your SAP windows sytems?  What is your configuration?

Thanks

David

[Former Member]

Jerome,

Would these languages be at the SAP windows server level or the Print file server?

[Former Member]

You certainly need it at the print file server level if using the SAPSprint method. And it wouldn't hurt to install it at the SAP server level as well, it's only ~300 MB.

[jerome_lim]

Hi David,

Language issue depends on different level of infrastructure, the ECC (unicode packages), the os level (which in current case Windows), the network printer. In you old system landscape on iSeries was able to print the special charaters, issue is only come up when you move the system to Windows platform.

From this point of view, I'd say only install the package on Windows shall be ok.

kr

Jerome

[jerome_lim]

hi,

Check the windows regional and language settings , whether you have installed files for East Asia Languages.

good luck.

Jerome

[nils_buerckel]

Hi David,

which device types do you use on the iseries system ?

Device type swincf should work for most of the languages ...

Best regards,

Nils Buerckel