Printing Japanese Characters on Zebra ZM400 from Smartform

[Former Member]

Hi Experts

I am trying to configure a Zebra ZM400 printer to print a Japanese label from a smartform but get no Japanese characters on the output.

The original language of the smartform is English, but I have maintained a translation in SE63 which uses the Andale_J font.

The printer ZM400 has the ANDMJ.TTF font installed and the printer has been set up in SPAD to use the LZEBU2 device type (which is the Zebra Printer Driver for 200dpi) and the Berkeley protocol (U).

When looking at the printer spool in graphical format I am getting the appropriate Japanese characters displayed, when looking in RAW format it appears to be using the correct font, FCANDALE_J, although the characters are represented as #'s. On the printer output, I get numbers or English where no translation has been maintained, but nothing where the Japanese characters should be.

Has anyone come across this problem before, or have any idea how to solve this issue?

Thanks very much

Andrew Beavan

[Former Member]

Hi Aidan

Thanks for your responses on the issue. I continued to try various options and have now resolved the problem.

The printer we received had additional memory installed, which was setup on the printer as the E drive, I then installed the font to this drive, E:ANMDJ.FNT.

I changed another printer to use the LZEBU2 device type and printed my smartform to this printer. This then output the commands that would be passed to the Zebra printer, from this I could see the font substitution was looking on the incorrect drive, e.g. B:ANMDJ.FNT (this may be set in the printer driver and be a legacy of when the font was provided on a PCMCIA device)

Therefore, I was able to enter a command in the smartform to be passed to the printer to substitute with the font from the correct location.

S_LZPL_SETUP '^{CWI,E:ANMDJ.FNT}FS'

Printing the smartform to the Zebra printer then resulted in Japanese characters printing correctly.

[Former Member]

A further update to this post.

I have been working on printing Chinese Characters on the Zebra ZM400.

For this to work I am using a similar command, but it does need to be slightly different.

The standard commands being sent to the printer are

^{CWI,B:ANMDJ.FNT}FS for the Japanese font and

^{CWK,B:ANMDS.FNT}FS for the Chinese font.

Therefore the command in the smartform needs to be

'^{CWK,E:ANMDS.TTF}FS^LH15,15FS'

Hopefully this will be useful for someone.

[Former Member]

Hello Andrew,

I am working on printing chinese labels on Zebra ZM400. The printer has the fonts ANMDS.FNT on its onboard flash memory. In my smartforms i am using the font ANDALE_S and no chinese characters are printed on the label. Could you please suggest me on this?

Thanks!

Regards,

Bobby

[Former Member]

Hi Bobby

The key things to check are the printer device type that you are printing to. I am using the LZEBU2 device type.

When printing in Japanese I was using the ANDALE_J font, but for printing in Chinese I am using the HELVE font and using the command from my previous post to apply a font conversion. The command being sent does depend on the font that needs to be used on the printer.

Presumably the print preview in SAP is correct? And you can print Chinese on the label printer from a non-SAP source?

If so, I found it useful to print the label to an existing HP laser printer, this gave me the information regarding the command to send to the printer in the smartform.

Hopefully that may help you solve your problem.

Kind regards

Andrew

[Former Member]

Hello Andrew,

I am using the ZPL command L_LZPL_SETUP to force the font and i am now able to print chinese characters. But the font size is more than what the label can accomodate and so it is not printing the complete text. Could you please suggest me the document containing the ZPL II commands for text formatting , font sizes etc.

Thanks!

Regards,

Bobby

[Former Member]

Hi Bobby

If you go to the following URL you should be able to access the resources you need for your printer.

http://www.zebra.com/id/zebra/na/en/index/resource_library/manuals.html

Kind regards

Andrew

[Former Member]

Hello Andrew,

Today when i tried to print the label, the chinese characters vanished again. I have gone back to the initial situation. When i started looking at if any thing was changed, I have checked the printer fonts for the device ZLZBU3 in SE73 and HELVE is not assigned to it. Do we have to assign it to the device type as we are using the font HELVE in my character format of the smart style to print the chinese characters?

Regards,

Bobby

[Former Member]

Hi Bobby

Have you added any additional commands to the smartform for the printer? Can you confirm that the printer still has the font installed?

I am using device type LZEBU2 for my label printer and looking in SE73 this device type printer fonts are the ANDALE family, no mention of HELVE, but this still works for moth my Japanese and Chinese labels.

Other than that, I'm not sure that I have any other suggestions.

Kind regards

Andrew

[Former Member]

Hi,

Any chance one of you is consultant in that area and wants to do a Project implementing Chinese Printing on Lable printers and Data Cards ? Of course I am looking for someone who has experience on this,

Thank you for your answers,

Marc

[aidan_black]

Hello Andrew,

As per point 4 of SAP note #750772, device type LZEBU2 only supports TrueType fonts that have Unicode encoding.

I think you uploaded font ANDMJ.TTF was uploaded via transaction SE73. If you want font ANDMJ.TTF to be used, you must specify the font name under which this font was uploaded via SE73 in your smartform. it seems that you specified font name ANDALE_J in the form.

If you specify font name ANDALE_J in the form,then it is expected that the Zebra printer has the Unicode fonts installed internally in the printer as per notes #750002 and #750772.

Regards,

Aidan

[Former Member]

Hi Aidan

Thanks for your swift response, as you may have guessed this is all very new to me and so I am struggling to make much progress.

I have uploaded the andale_j font to the printer which creates a file called anmdj.TTF. I have also uploaded a JIS.DAT file which should convert any TTF to unicode and a printer configuration file which should effectively set this font as the default.

I have tried to upload a TTF font in SAP using se73 and created a device type to go with this, however whenever I set the device type for the printer to this I get no print spool request generated. Based on your reply, I have created a style using the TTF font I uploaded, but again when I reference this in a smartform I get no errors displayed, but I also don't get a print spool request generated so I'm not convinced that the font has been loaded correctly into SAP.

I have just wiped the flash memory on the printer and am re-loading the font using a slightly different setting on the printer, so will try that, but welcome any further suggestions or clarifications if I have mis-understood your previous reply.

Many thanks for your help.

Andrew Beavan

[aidan_black]

Hi Andrew,

If you have installed the Andale unicode font in the printer, then there should be no need to also upload as a true type font to SAP.

In SE73 -> Printer Fonts -> LZEBU2, you can see that font ANDALE_J is maintained. If you select this font ANDALE_J in your form, then this should ensure that a command is sent to the printer from SAP to switch to the Andale font internally in the printer.

As per Note 750772, "Unicode device types for Zebra printers with ANDALE Unicode fonts:

Important note: To use these device types, the Zebra printer must be equipped with a memory card that contains a particular ANDALE Unicode font. The device type does not work without the ANDALE font on the memory card. "

The note gives more details about the memory cars required.

Regards,

Aidan