Greek characters getting printed as # in smartform

[Former Member]

Hi All,

A delivery note is getting printed and adress fields like city and street of some customers are maintained in greek language . Font Helve 8 is used to print them. When I am printing it with a particular printer the greek characters are getting printed as # but when I am testing the same smartform with a different printer ( having a different device type) then the problem is not occuring.

I have checked the printer fonts for both device types in SE73 and the Helve font is there. Can anyone tell me why greek character is coming as # in one printer but printing properly in another printer and how can I find out any difference between the two printers.

Regards

Sweta

[nils_buerckel]

Hi Sweta,

In general, if you have problems with special characters in forms I recommend to check the following points:

1) Check whether the system supports the characters

- Use rscpinst (see SAP note 42305) to check / add the language

- In Unicode systems, there should be no further issue, since it supports all needed characters (see SAP note 73606).

- If the system in the Non-Unicode case does not support the characters, printing of these texts is NOT supported.

2) Find out where the problem occurs:

a) Print preview and physical printout

The print preview is independent of the physical printing. Therefore you can have 3 cases:

i) Print preview ok, but physical printout wrong

- Please check points 6) and 7) first - then 3)- 5) also.

ii) Print preview wrong, but physical printout ok

Please use the latest SAPGUI version. In some rare cases, there could be problems with complex scripts also with the latest SAPGUI.

iii) Both print preview and physical printout wrong

In this case, please check points 3)-7)

b) PDF creation

Please have a look at SAP note 999712 for Unicode systems. Check also points 3)-6).

3) Check font settings for the form (transaction SE73) - the font needs to support the characters

4) The language key of the form has to match to the data you want to print. This is especially important for Asian and RTL languages. Non-Latin-1 data and EN as language key can be problematic !

5) In case of Unicode-only languages and characters (like e.g. Vietnamese or Hindi), check SAP note 895560.

6) Check device type used - the device type needs to support the characters

-In general, a # symbol means that the system tried to convert a character to a code page, in which it is not supported

(# is the default replacement symbol). This is for example an indication, that the used device type does not support the required code page.

In this case, I recommend to use a Windows device type (SWINCF or local windows device type like e.g. I7SWIN for Greek - see also SAP note 8928) - at least in order to find the root cause of the problem.

7) In case of Backend printing - e.g. device type HPLJ4 (or similar), in addition the printer has to support

the used characters in the font stored locally.

For Unicode printers, please have a look at SAP note 895560 point 1.

Best regards,

Nils Buerckel

SAP AG

[Former Member]

Hi,

It will be related to your printer settings,check with your basis team.

Refer to this link, 9th point

http://www.saptechies.com/frequently-asked-questions-about-sap-smart-forms/

-Keerthi

[Former Member]

Hi,

Zebra printer is not used in this case and also we tried with font HELVE_17 as it is the recommended language for printing greek characters . But its not working. I think it is an issue with the printer itself so how do I check that myself ?

Regards

Sweta

[david_liu1]

Hello,

You can try to use the device type I7SWIN or if you use a

unicode system then the device type SWINCF.

Regrards,

David