Japanese

The following problems have been encountered with Host On-Demand running in a Japanese language environment:

• Japanese character-conversion through the Windows clipboard
• Katakana characters are displayed as rectangular boxes
• Backslash displays as yen
• Japanese Yen and Korean Won appear as backslashes (\) on Japanese and Korean Win32 browsers
• IBM-Selected characters on AIX
• Restrictions on automatic shift change with Japanese locale
• Inputting Japanese Characters
• Restrictions on Japanese Unicode Extended code pages (1390/1399) support
• Euro currency symbol not printed out in Windows Native Printer Interface Mode
• Parameter to match IBM Personal Communications code page conversion for Japanese codepages 1390 and 1399

Japanese character conversion through the Windows clipboard

On Japanese Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 98, with host code-pages 930 and 939, when host code-points X'41F2'-X'41FA' and X'446D'-X'446F' are copied through the clipboard, they are always converted to NEC-Selected characters, not IBM-Selected.

Katakana characters are displayed as rectangular boxes.

Problem

The scenario is as follows:

• The Host On-Demand client is running on Red Hat Linux version 7.2.
• The browser is Netscape 6.2.3.
• The browser is using the Sun Java 2 plug-in version 1.3.1_02-b02. This is the Java 2 plug-in that was installed during the Netscape 6.2.3 installation.
• The locale is Japanese.
• A 3270 Display session is in progress.

The problem is that any character from the katakana character set that is displayed in the 3270 Display session is displayed as a rectangular box.

Fix

The fix is to use the IBM Java 2 plug-in rather than the Sun Java 2 plug-in, and to use the IBM WorldType font Monotype Sans Duospace WT J.

Part 1:

To use the IBM Java 2 plug-in rather than the Sun Java 2 plug-in, you must first obtain and install the IBM Java 2 plug-in version 1.3.1 or later for Linux. Then follow these steps:

1. These steps assume that:
   • Netscape 6.2.3 is installed in
     /usr/local/netscape
   • The IBM Java 2 plug-in is installed in
     /opt/IBMJava2-131


2. Change to the plugins subdirectory in the netscape install directory:
   cd /usr/local/netscape/plugins



3. Rename the existing file libjavaplugin_oji.so:
   mv libjavaplugin_oji.so libjavaplugin_oji.so.backup



4. Create a symbolic link to the file libjavaplugin_oji.so in the IBM Java 2 directory:
   ln -s /opt/IBMJava2-131/jre/bin/libjavaplugin_oji.so libjavaplugin_oji.so

Part 2:

To use the IBM WorldType font Monotype Sans Duospace WT J, you must first download the font file mtsansdj.ttf from the Host On-Demand Support page at: http://www.ibm.com/software/webservers/hostondemand/support.html. Then follow these steps:

1. These steps assume that:
   • The IBM Java 2 plug-in is installed in
     /opt/IBMJava2-131
   
   
2. Copy the font file mtsansdj.ttf to the fonts subdirectory of the Java 2 plug-in install directory. The path of the fonts directory is:
   /opt/IBMJava2-131/jre/lib/fonts



3. Change to the same directory:
   cd /opt/IBMJava2-131/jre/lib/fonts



4. From the fonts directory, run the Linux utility ttmkfdir twice, as follows:
   ttmkfdir >fonts.scale
ttmkfdir >fonts.dir

Part 3:

Restart the browser.

Backslash displays as yen

If you type a backslash with either a US 101-key or Japanese 106-key keyboard on Japanese Windows NT or Windows 98, it displays as a Yen sign. This seems to be a problem with both Netscape 4 and Internet Explorer 4.

Japanese Yen and Korean Won appear as backslashes (\) on Japanese and Korean Win32 browsers

Because of a JVM problem, the following double-byte characters appear as backslashes (\):

• Yen (Japanese)
• Won (Korean)

This is a browser limitation on Korean and Japanese Win32 platforms.

IBM-Selected characters on AIX

On AIX (Japanese EUC or 932), with host code-pages 930 and 939, IBM-Selected characters cannot be displayed correctly.

Restrictions on automatic shift change with Japanese locale

• Automatic shift-status change when the cursor enters or exits a 5250 Katakana shift field

You must therefore change the shift or IME status manually to input characters in a particular shift status.

Inputting Japanese characters

If you want to enter Japanese characters, press the double-byte character set (DBCS) input key. A text field displays. You can type any Japanese or alphanumeric characters into this text field using the Input Method provided by your operating system. You can also use any Host On-Demand key functions in this text field. you do not need to close the window to perform another session operation.

To close the window, press the DBCS Input key again.

When you close this window, make sure you exit the Input Method you used to input the Japanese characters. If you do not exit the Input Method, you might not be able to type characters on the session screen.

Some browsers, such as Internet Explorer 4.0x and Netscape Communicator 4.0x, support the Japanese character input method to type characters into a Host On-Demand window. In this case, you don't need to use the Japanese Input window.

Restrictions on Japanese Unicode Extended code pages (1390/1399) support

The following restrictions apply to Japanese Unicode Extended code pages (1390 - Katakana Unicode Extended / 1399 - Latin Unicode Extended) support:

• 1390 code page is supported only on 3270 sessions.
• DBCS host code points (not found in local code page 943 (=MS932)) can not be entered using Input Method Editor (IME) provided with Windows NT, Windows 98, and Windows 2000. You can enter them using the Unicode character table (ucharmap.exe) that comes with Windows NT and Windows 2000. However, Windows 98 does not provide ucharmap.exe.
• The new DBCS User Defined Font area (not found in local code page 943 (=MS932)) can be defined only by the User Defined Character Editor (eudcedit.exe) in Windows 2000. The User Defined Character Editor in Windows 98 or Windows NT does not support code points in Unicode.
• On Windows 2000, two User Defined Characters (X'7EAC' and X'7EAD' on host code pages; U+F001 and U+F0002 on Unicode) are already used by Windows. You cannot override these characters.
• The Japanese host code pages 1390/1399 contain many characters that are not found in Japanese ASCII code pages. Some characters, including Euro dollar symbol, are not displayed correctly on Windows NT, Windows 98, and Windows 2000 due to the restrictions of Windows fonts.

Euro currency symbol not printed out in Windows Native Printer Interface Mode

When Host On-Demand host printing is used in Windows Native Printer Interface Mode with the MS Mincho font (which is the Host On-Demand default font on Japanese Windows) or with the MS Gothic font, the Euro currency symbol is not printed out correctly.

This problem is that MS Mincho and MS Gothic do not contain the Euro currency symbol.

To fix this problem, install the IBM WorldType font "Monotype Sans Duospace WT J" and select this font in the Font listbox on the Page Setup tab of the 3270 Printer session configuration.

Parameter to match IBM Personal Communications code page conversion for Japanese codepages 1390 and 1399

A difference exists between the Personal Communications and Host On-Demand code page conversion for Japanese codepages 1390 and 1399. An HTML parameter, "UseHodCDRA1399" has been created to enable Host On-Demand to use the same conversion table as Personal Communications when the parameter is set as false.