Is it possible to store and display the Trademark Symbol in Oracle/HP-UX? May need to change hosts.

[Jack C. Mahaffey]

This likely will appear to be a repeat question. I'm not having much luck...

I need to be able to convert Oracle production databases on HP-UX that can support the insertion, maintenance and display of the Trademark???, Copyright ?? and Registered ?? symbols.

All clients are UNIX MOTIF clients, which are currently running xterm sessions. I also need to be able to using sqlplus on the UNIX host.

Is it even possible? Previous forum discussions referred to the WE8MSWIN1252 character set, which appears to be windows only. I have also seen references to using UTF-8.

We are currently running Oracle 7.3.x running on HP-UX 11.00 and are considering upgrading to Oracle 9x.

The problem appears to be a UNIX problem. Will I also need to upgrade to 11i?

We may need to move our databases off of HP to a Windows platform for this capability. This impacts 10-15 HP servers.

If it is possible on HP, could someone tell me specificially what needs done on the HP server to make it happen? e.g. Upgrade to 11i, Install Oracle9x, Create database with ??? characterset, set LANG to ?, set NLS_LANG to ?, set TERM to ?...

locale -a currently shows the following appropriate locales.

en_US.iso88591
en_US.roman8
C
POSIX
C.iso88591
C.utf8
univ.utf8

My response to my users up to this point has been that I don't think it can be done.


Thanks in advance...
Jack...

[harry d brown jr]

Jack,

This is not an issue of unix, it's an issue for oracle or your application.

Unix allows you to read or write any character you wish, from Hex 00 to Hex FF.

Try this from a xterm session:

echo \\0251 \\0256

It's an application thing!

live free or die
harry

[harry d brown jr]

Forgot this:

http://technet.oracle.com//products/oracle8/htdocs/xnls3twp.htm


live free or die
harry

[Jack C. Mahaffey]

Okay... What do I do to display the trademark, copyright and registered symbols?

[Jack C. Mahaffey]

Wasn't clear on my reply.

What do I do to display the copyright, registered and trademark symbols at the UNIX shell prompt?

What can I echo to see these values?

Thanks...

[Jack C. Mahaffey]

I exported LANG=en_US.iso88591, started xterm with a 88591 font and did the echo and both copyright and registered symbols printed.

I also need the trademark symbol. I got this far before. The trademark symbol is a show stopper.

Any ideas?

[Wodisch]

Hi Jack,

I guess you problem is more about the displaying of those characters/symbols...
Then you'll need to use a proper font for ALL your applications (=Xclients) and for your database. ISO8859-1 or -15 should be fine for your Oracle-DB (=western-1 or -15), so you just have to check for the fitting X-windows fonts. Use "xlsfonts" on the Xserver of your choice and "grep" for those you want, like here:
xlsfonts | grep -i "iso8859-15*$" | more
Omit everything including "-o-", "-i-", "-bold-" in its name!
Then use "xfd -fn XXX" to display the candidates (where "XXX" must be substituted with the complete fontname form the "xlsfonts", including the starting dash!).
Now that you have found your fonts, instruct your application to always use them by writing them into your user's "$HOME/.Xdefaults", like the Window Manager "dtwm" (the asterisks mean "don't care"):
Dtwm*userFont: -adobe-courier-medium-r-normal--10-*-75-75-m-*-iso8859-1
Dtterm*userBoldFont: -adobe-courier-medium-r-normal--10-*-75-75-m-*-iso8859-1
Dtwm*fontList: -adobe-courier-medium-r-normal--10-*-75-75-m-*-iso8859-1

After restarting your windows manager and your applications you should be able to see those characters.
But be careful - the POSIX shell will not permit you to enter those characters from your keyboard (you may use /usr/old/bin/sh for testing, and set "stty -istrip cs8"!).

HTH,
Wodisch

[Jack C. Mahaffey]

I still can't locate the trademark symbol.

jack...

[harry d brown jr]

Jack,

What does displaying the symbols at a shell prompt have to do with being able to store them in Oracle or display them from an application? I know I showed you quickly how to display the copyright and registered symbols from a shell prompt in an xterm window, but that doesn't prove much other than ANY character string can be stored and retrieved in unix.

The display depends upon the application display the symbols to the user. If the application has the ability to display the symbols then they get displayed.


live free or die
harry

[Wodisch]

Hi again,

Jack, it seems all you need is an Characterset codetable!
Well, start "xfd -fn iso15_9x15" and search for all the symbols you want in the window that opens. Then left-mouse click on it and on the top part of theat window you'll see the codenumber in octal, in decimal, and in hexadecimal.

HTH,
Wodisch

[harry d brown jr]

Thanks to Wodisch we have "xfd"

xfd -fn asyma16

will show all of the symbols:

trademark - copyright - registered - and a lot more!

and

xlsfonts will show all of the fonts available. If you use any fonts with imbedded spaces but the font string in quotes.

live free or die
harry

[harry d brown jr]

You have about 60 posts that you haven't responded to:
http://forums.itrc.hp.com/cm/TopSolutions/1,,CA333920!1!questions,00.html

live free or die
harry

[Jack C. Mahaffey]

In reponse to: "What does displaying the symbols at a shell prompt have to do with being able to store them in Oracle or display them from an application? "

If I can display the symbol with a shell prompt or xfd, then I should be able to create and display the synbol while I'm in sqlplus or an Motif application. This was my thinking. What other method is there to see the symbol? The symbol I'm missing is the Trademark symbol.

I'm pretty sure I need a different default LANG value. Just don't know how to go about getting the character set that has the symbol.

Sorry for being a pain, this is a pretty big issue until I can get it resolved.

jack..

[Jack C. Mahaffey]

This is what I get when I execute xfd -fn asyma16


[8155]root@cordayop:/root # xfd -fn asyma16
Warning: Actions not found: Quit, Next, Prev
Warning: Cannot convert string "asyma16" to type FontStruct
xfd: no font to display


I've posted the problem on the Oracle web forum also. Haven't checked for replys yet.

Jack...

[Wodisch]

Hi again,

so you will have to use an X-Windows Font Server (xfs) on the system where you try to display that character.
On any HP-UX 10.20 or 11.x system edit your "/etc/rc.config.d/xfs" and change the "=0" in the last line to "=1".
Then start the daemon with "/sbin/init.d/xfs start".
Now make your X-session use it with "xset fp+ TCP/your-HPUX-host:7000", where "your-HPUX-host" would be the hostname or IP-address of the station running that "xfs"!
Now list the fonts you can use there with "xlsfonts" and use "xfd" to find one containing the characters you need.
Then use that font for your application like I described in my first reply.
If you need to enter these characters from the command-line, you will have to use a different shell, like "/usr/old/bin/sh" and enable 8bit characters with "stty -istrip cs8"...
On my system e.g. the font "-adobe-symbol-medium-r-normal--18-180-75-75-p-107-adobe-fontspecific" does include the "TM" symbol at position 212...

HTH,
Wodisch

[Jack C. Mahaffey]

Great help, I think we're getting closer. My delimma is there are well over 8,700 fonts listed by running xlsfonts. I followed your guidance and was able to see the trademark symbols. I didn't see the rest of the alphabet, however.

Can you think of a character set / font combination that contains all the standard characters along with the copyright, trademark and registered symbols?

Once I find a usuable character set, I'll then need to see about doing inserts and updates in an Oracle database.


I really appreciate your feedback.

jack...

[Jack C. Mahaffey]

Here's the latest feedback I got from Oracle...

1) The trademark symbol is supported by WE8MSWIN1252, UTF8 characterset. For the complete list of the characterset which support trademark symbol, please refer to NOTE:121261.1.

2) We will recommend you to migrate to UTF8 characterset. But it is a multibyte character set and it may be difficult to configure Motif to support it. This would be a task for HP support.

3) you can use alter database character set command to migrate to UTF8 ( I am assuming that your currect database character set is US7ASCII). If your database characterset is different then let us know.

3) the NLS_LANG needs to set to UTF8.

4) since Oracle7 doesnot support multibyte characterset, you have to upgrade database to Oacle8i or higher version. It is recommended to have latest patchset applied on the database.



From reading the reply it looks like I'll need to configure UNIX and Oracle to use the UTF-8 character set. The next major hurdle will be figuring out how to configure MOTIF to use the UTF-8 characterset.

I'm now off reading the forums to try to figure out how to configure HP-UX for the UTF-8 characterset.

[Wodisch · Accepted solution]

Hi again,

OSF/Motif does not have a problem there, as "Motif Strings" (="Compound String") do have an attribute for the character set per so-called "segment" (which can be any string of characters).
Your application will have the problem, as it has to specify the parts of the compound string.
Read the man pages for "XmFontListCreate(3)" and "XmString(3)" and "XmStringCreate(3)" for the details.

To create your own font you'll need the commands "fstobdf" and a configured X11 Font Server (=fs) to convert an existing one form the font server into the old BDF format. Then you would have to edit that (as it is text), and compile it back into the new PCF format with "bdftopcf" and install it into your font server...

Regards,
Wodisch