topic Euro symbol in Operating System - OpenVMS

Euro symbol

Jefferson Humber — Wed, 18 Feb 2004 06:15:06 GMT

Am trying to get the Euro symbol to display properly on my Alpha system (7.3-2).

I have set my Reflections terminal to the 'ISO Latin-9' character set, and I can enter the euro symbol on the command line and in files OK using the Ctrl+Alt+4 keyboard shortcut.

However we receive text files from our SAP system (via FTP) which contain the Euro symbol, but it doesn't display properly.

If you look at these files in an editor the symbol is replaced with a backwards question mark, whilst searching the file displays (which is ASCII for 128).

I have installed the VMSI18N_ALPHA0732 kit, but am unsure if I have to declare any logicals to use the EN_GB_ISO8859-1-EURO locale. I assume I need this one since I am in the UK wanting to use the Euro symbol ?

Does anybody have any experience in obtaining proper Euro symbol support on OpenVMS ?

Could it be that the FTP transfer of these text files is corrupting things some how ?

Your help is greatly appreciated,

Jeff

Re: Euro symbol

Willem Grooters — Wed, 18 Feb 2004 08:46:40 GMT

Jeff,

I think it may depend on the characterset in Reflection. (On a 7.3-1 system using Reflection 6.0, I'm not able to enter the Euro symbol, nor is it shown. BTW - ISO Latin-9 is described as "Turkish"...).
From previous versions of VMS I know you needed to install a patch for the EURO symbol - but that could well mean for VMS directly only. I don't know if this patch applies to 7.3-2 as well (doubt it, but who knows)
What happens if you use a directly connected terminal (both XWindows as VT)?
You may also compare a file where you could manually add the EURO symbol and the transferred SAP files containing the symbol. It's possible this differs as well (it shouldnt but I know there are different implementations!)

Re: Euro symbol

Martin Kirby — Wed, 18 Feb 2004 09:39:07 GMT

Jeff,

On OpenVMS V7.3-2 there is an option when you install as to whether you want the modified fonts for Euro support installed (default is to install them).

To enable them you need to copy some sys$manager template files see:

http://h71000.www7.hp.com/doc/732final/6663/6663pro_007.html#enable_euro

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However, the DECwindows Euro support is not done using ISO-latin-9, it just changes the font representation for 0xA4. Which means that if you are using Reflections for your display, and using fonts on your PC, I think DECwindows support is irrelevant.

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It sounds to me as though the file you have is corrupt. The characters should be can you patch them and see if it then shows the Euro?

Martin Kirby

Re: Euro symbol

Martin P.J. Zinser — Wed, 18 Feb 2004 17:01:59 GMT

Hello Jeff,

first of all I do agree with the other posters, the encoding you are talking about is ISO-Latin-15 not 9. VMS does display what is in the file, which is not a Euro Symbol since this is not ASCII 128.

Some things to investigate:

1.) What type of system is the file coming from and what character encoding is used there?
2.) How is the character represented on the source system? Does it appear as x80 already?
3.) Since we are talking SAP we are talking a database too. This is another place where a wrong encoding can be stored. Make sure you have the right NLS settings on this end too.
4.) To exclude problems with the FTP transfer, try wrapping the file into a Zip archive, transfer this and then unpack on
the VMS system. How does the character appear when transfered this way?

Greetings, Martin

Re: Euro symbol

Willem Grooters — Thu, 19 Feb 2004 02:27:18 GMT

Martin, (both)

I wasn't aware of the binary value of the Euro Symbol (xA4). Thanks.

Jeff,
I agree with Martin Zinser - your database may be the other source of problem: What character set is used there? I've seen trouble ariseing exporting data 'as-is' over different sets - causing conversion problems. Also, software may interpret byte-values within given ranges differently than you would expect. It may be the software creating the textfiles that translates all "non-printable" characters to x80; if the euro symbol is not recognized by that software as printable, it won't be translated...

Re: Euro symbol

Antoniov. — Thu, 19 Feb 2004 02:51:38 GMT

Hi Jeff,
if you use VT terminal, you can't see euro sign without loading font to terminal.
For decwindows keep Martin's post.

Bye
Antoniov

Re: Euro symbol

Frank Weichert — Mon, 23 Feb 2004 20:47:45 GMT

For VT420,VT5xx you can use softfonts

P1;1;1;4{ @ ! Start-Sequenz
??oGCCCCG?/?DNTdd__0?/??????????; ! Bitmap
\ ! End-Sequenz

(after ! are comments only)

) @ ! aktivates the char
(B ! restores the old char

Now you can write dezimal 14,33,15 and
the Euro-Sign is visible on your VT
- dez 14 = Special Sign on
- dez 33 = Euro-Sign
- dez 15 = Special Sign off

VT-Emulation PowerTerm (from Pathworks CD)
has Euro-Sign included.

Frank