PDFing Home Page National Language Considerations for *SCS spooled-files
All un-transformed *SCS spooled-files require translation from EBCDIC to ASCII encoding. The translation tables supplied with PDFing may be customised by the user as described below.
All transformed *SCS and *AFPDS spooled-file translation from EBCDIC to ASCII is performed by the OS400 host print transform function. Translation may be customised by the user creating a work station customisation object (*WSCST) and configuring an output-queue to use this *WSCST object. Please refer to document: Work Station Customisation for PDFing for more information.


By default, PDFing will use the EBCDIC to ASCII translation table defined in file: \Res\Ebcdic00037.txt. This is the table for translating spooled-files created by users in the United States (CCSID: 00037). If PDFing is only being used to convert spooled-files created by United States users then no customisation is required.
PDFing comes with 18 different EBCDIC to ASCII translation tables: You can find out what code-page is in use on your OS400 system, by displaying the system-value: QCCSSID using command:
DSPSYSVAL QCCSSID
If you want to have translation performed by one of these tables, then you can copy the file for the country you require to file: \Markup\Ebcdic.txt. After this PDFing will always use the translation table defined in this file. If you later install an update of PDFing, the table in this file will not be changed.
For PDFing V3 or later, you can use the [System] page of the configuration program to automatically select the translation table you require. In the example below, the value selected in the "*SCS CodePage" control means that the translation table 285 for the United Kingdom will be used.

national language settings

You can see the different results for these tables in the (249kb) PDF document Generated SCS code pages.
Please note that for code-pages: 870 and 1153 the output PDF will use the windows "truetype" font "Courier New" and this font will be (by default) embedded into any PDFs converted using this table. Embedding fonts adds to the size of the PDF, so if you are sure that this PDF will only be read on systems where "Courier New" is installed, you can edit the table, remove the :EMBED intruction, so that the font will not embedded.


If you open file: Ebcdic00037.txt with a text editor, you will see that you can adjust the table very easily. Lines that begin with the hash (#) character are comments and can be ignored. Lines that begin with two hex digits followed by a space and an ASCII character define the translation of one character. The first two hex digits define an EBCDIC code, the following character (or hex digits) define the equivalent ASCII code. For example:
40 20 - defines the translation of EBCDIC space to an ASCII space.
F9 9 - defines the translation of EBCDIC number nine to ASCII number nine
If an EBCDIC code is not in the table then it will be translated by default to decimal 0 and will not be included in the PDF document.
You can create your new tables for your own translation needs. See Appendix B of Generated SCS code pages for the ASCII code page used by PDFing. For instance you may need to support a new CCSID with the "euro" character. You can test the results using the OS400 utility command: TSTCHARSET. We will be happy to help with your special translation needs, contact us by sending an e-mail to: jhearn@pdfing.com.


If you are in an environment where users of different languages are producing spooled-files in various national languages on the same machine, you may specify the translation table to be used for each spooled-file.
You need to enter the text in the user-print information as follows:
CHGUSRPRTI USER(*CURRENT) TEXT('EML=nnnnn')
Where nnnnn is the default CCSID of the job creating spooled-files. For instance:
CHGUSRPRTI USER(*CURRENT) TEXT('EML=00285')
will indicate that spooled-files created by this user will be translated by the table defined in Ebcdic000285.txt (United Kingdom users).
If you have downloaded the latest version of our OS400 utilities for PDFing you can arrange for the SETPDFDFT command to do this automatically. As delivered SETPDFDFT will not do this. If you create a one character data-area called PDFING in a library and that library is in the list for the job, executing SETPDFDFT will automatically add the EML= tag with the correct CCSID for the job. If PDFing can not find the corresponding table, then the default translation table will be used.


The user-defined-text attribute sent to PDFing with spooled-files is always translated from EBCDIC to ASCII by the default translation table object QTCPASC supplied in OS400. Because this table is usually set up for translation from the United-States code-page, certain characters like @ that "float" in the EBCDIC code tables may be translated to an incorrect ASCII character. However the deafult setting of the "*TCP CodePage" control automatically correct such mis-translations. 
If the is automatic correction is not sufficient, you may use the [System] page of the configuration program to correct such mis-translation. In the example below, the value 37 selected in the "*TCP CodePage" control means that all mis-translations are automatically corrected, provided that the OS400 table QTCPASC defines translation for the United Stated code-page.

national language settings

If you select N/A as the control value, PDFing will attempt to correct mis-translation of the significant characters using certain key values in the configuration file.
[SMTP]
DOMAINCHARS=40B9F88EEB
The string represents five two-digit hex numbers that are the ASCII characters resulting from mis-translation of user defined text. If any of these characters are found in the e-mail address they will be translated to the ASCII "at" @ character.
[SMTP]
ADDRESSCHARS=24989B
The string represents three two-digit hex numbers that are the ASCII characters resulting from mis-translation of user defined text. If any of these characters are found in the e-mail address they will be translated to the ASCII "dollar" $ character.
[SMTP]
DIRSEPCHARS=5C88AB
The string represents three two-digit hex numbers that are the ASCII characters resulting from mis-translation of user defined text. If any of these characters are found in the e-mail address they will be translated to the ASCII "back-slash" \ character.
If you find that you have problems with particular EBCDIC characters, you may URL encode the character to prevent mis-translation.


This document ©Jane Hearn 2004-2013.