Datamax and Unicode

Datamax and Unicode

As more and more businesses and other users of data around the world learn how to interact with one another in a global community, the importance of universally clear and concise messaging, documentation, software, and media become even more important. To this end the Unicode Consortium was formed to author and maintain Unicode. Additionally, Datamax printers support UTF-8 decoding of the Unicode character set provided the selected font is Unicode encoded.

What is Unicode?

Simply put, one global character set.

As stated on the Unicode website (www.unicode.org), “Unicode covers all the characters for all the writing systems of the world, modern and ancient. It also includes technical symbols, punctuations, and many other characters used in writing text. The Unicode Standard is intended to support the needs of all types of users, whether in business or academia, using mainstream or minority scripts. Unicode incorporates the characters of all the major government standards for ideographic characters from Japan, Korea, China, and Taiwan, and more. The Unicode Standard, Version 4.0 has over 70,000 ideographic characters. The Unicode Consortium actively works with the IRG committee of ISO SC2/WG2 to define additional sets of ideographic characters for inclusion in future versions.

Fundamentally, computers just deal with numbers. They store letters and other characters by assigning a number for each one. Before Unicode was invented, there were hundreds of different encoding systems for assigning these numbers. No single encoding could contain enough characters: for example, the European Union alone requires several different encodings to cover all its languages. Even for a single language like English, no single encoding was adequate for all the letters, punctuation, and technical symbols in common use.

Unicode provides a unique number for every character, no matter what the platform, no matter what the program, no matter what the language. Such industry leaders as Apple, HP, IBM, JustSystem, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, Sun, Sybase, Unisys and many others have adopted the Unicode Standard. Unicode is required by modern standards such as XML, Java, ECMAScript (JavaScript), LDAP, CORBA 3.0, WML, etc. It is supported in many operating systems, all modern browsers, and many other products. The emergence of the Unicode Standard, and the availability of tools supporting it, are among the most significant recent global software technology trends.”

For example, in the existing ASCII world, the upper case letter “A” is represented by the decimal number 65, or the hexadecimal number 41. The character “A”, U+0041 Latin Capital Letter A, may be represented in the following ways:

The Unicode equivalent of the upper case letter “A”, which is found in the CO Controls and Basic Latin code chart (range 0000-007F), is 0041, or column 004, row 1.

What is UTF-8?

As the need increased to include additional characters in Unicode, the encoding standard grew to accommodate 16-bit (UTF-16) and 32-bit (UTF-32) structures. UTF-8 stands for UCS (Universal Character Set) Transformation Format, 8-bit form. UTF-8 is one of the seven Unicode encoding schemes. UTF-8 provides a method of encoding Unicode characters in application scenarios where it is necessary to remain backwards compatible with single-byte characters and allows for single-byte encoding of the remaining Unicode characters. The following table includes examples of four different characters and how they are encoded in each of three Unicode encoding schemes (Encoding Form in the table below). 

How Does Datamax Use Unicode and UTF-8 Decoding?

• UTF-8 is UCS (Universal Character Set) Transformation Format in 8-bit units

•Variable width encoding form from 1-4 bytes

• Meets requirements of byte oriented, ASCII based systems

• UTF-8 Maintains transparency for all ASCII code points from 0x00-0x7F

• UTF-8 Decoding implemented per Unicode Standard 4.0

• Datamax A, H, EX2 and M (except M4206) Class Printers have internal scalable fonts in Microtype format and support UTF-8

• UTF-8 support exists on the specified Datamax printers for all Datamax Bitmap fonts

• UTF-8 support exists on the specified Datamax printers for all downloaded Unicode encoded True Type fonts

• Datamax Programming Language is UTF-8 compliant

 What about label generation software and other application software?

Although Datamax printers are supported by all major label generation application software providers, one should not
assume that their software also supports Unicode and UTF-8 encoding/decoding. However, many of the major ERP
companies have supported Unicode for some time and those branching into global XML based solutions typically support
Unicode and UTF-8. When in doubt, check with your particular software vendor for confirmation.

FAQs?

Q: Moving forward, does this support for Unicode UTF-8 (U8) supplement existing encoding (GB, JS, UC etc) methods or
will Datamax remove some of the current encoding methods like GB used in the Simplified Chinese GB font (in I/W/A Font
card)?

A: UTF-8 (U8) will supplement the existing encoding methods. UTF-8 is a method for encoding any Unicode value
in single byte format. When U8 is selected, the printer will take all text and convert it from UTF-8 to Unicode values,
then submit the Unicode value for imaging.

Q: What are the differences or advantages in terms of Datamax support for UTF-8 as opposed to UTF-16 or UTF-32?

A: The printer command language is currently a single byte format that uses ASCII and some control codes. UTF-8
transmits these characters as their current single byte value making UTF-8 backwards compatible with the printer
command language. With UTF-16 or UTF-32, all characters sent to the printer would be modified to the larger byte
size. This also means that for an all-single byte label (Unicode character values not requiring multiple 8-bit units),
the transmission of the label will be faster.

Q: What is the difference when using yUUC (UNICODE) and ySU8 or yUU8 (UTF-8)?

A: UTF-8 is a single byte transmission method; therefore "yUU8" is not valid. With "yUUC", the label is transmitting
the Unicode value for the characters in the text string. With "ySU8", the label is transmitting the UTF-8 encoded
value for the Unicode value of the character in the text string.

Q: Specifically, which Datamax models support UTF-8?

A: Datamax A, H, and M-Class (except M-4206), and EX2 printers have internal scalable fonts in Microtype format
and support UTF-8. Datamax I and W-Class printers also support UTF-8 encoded downloaded fonts, as the internal
fonts, Triumvirate and CG Times, are Intelifont format and do not support Unicode. Any downloaded font that
supports Unicode will work with UTF-8 encoding. Additionally, Datamax will enable Micotype (UTF-8) internal fonts
in a future version of the firmware, however, the I-4206 / I-4208 will not support this future font option, due to
memory restraints.

Q: How are these encoding methods related to the ILPC fonts/font cards that Datamax offers for the various printers (A, I, E,
Ex2, M, W, H, S)?

A: UTF-8 encoding is in addition to the support provided by the ILPC fonts/font cards.

Q: Will any of the currently supported double-byte ILPC Asian fonts be removed and substituted with U8?

A: With our Chinese font, the GB encoding will still work as in the past. The Simplified Chinese font is not Unicode
encoded, but AGFA has supplied Datamax with an encoding table that will allow this font to support both GB and
Unicode encoding. When the new AGFA table is added, UTF-8 encoding will be supported by the Simplified
Chinese font. The Datamax plan is to implement UTF-8 Chinese in the H-Class, and all future printers. We do not
intend to implement in I/W and older printers. In the future, only Datamax printers that have been ”unlocked” will
work with a font file available on the ftp site. Using this distribution method we will not have to control the encrypted
font file. H-Class and A-Class support is expected in Q2’07.

Q: Will Datamax support the Unicode Standard Version 5.0?

A: It is assumed that all versions or Unicode will be backwards compatible and the new versions will have new
features that may or may not be of interest to us.

Q: What is the relationship (if any) between Unicode and the encoding methods in the current Datamax ILPC fonts?

A: Datamax started with 16-bit Unicode years ago. For this, every character was 16 bits. In our implementation the
DPL commands remained single byte and only the data went to 16 bits (double byte). With UTF8, only the
characters requiring more than 8 bits are converted to 16 bits. Again this affects the data portion of the DPL
language.