Tips & Techniques:
Using Asian Fonts in Create!form®

Support for Double-Byte Characters Addresses
Global Business Needs

Bottomline’s Create!form is a powerful electronic document solution that lets users easily customize, route and deliver output from major ERP systems and business applications in the form of professional-looking documents. Today, more than 2,000 organizations worldwide use Create!form to compose and distribute custom invoices, statements, checks, purchase orders and other documents – without ERP programming or application changes.

As the businesses of Bottomline’s clients expand globally, many customers are faced with the need to incorporate Asian fonts into their Create!form output. The latest Create!form product families, 2.x, 3.x and 6.x, provide support for Asian fonts, also referred to as double-byte characters.

How it Works
Unicode is the world standard for encoding text. Nearly all of the characters used in modern writing systems have been assigned to unique code positions. Non-unicode fonts use the second 128 characters of the 256 ASCII character set for non-Latin characters and require the operating system to be set to the correct regional settings for the font that is to be used. Windows 2000 user systems are “unicode-aware,” offering special tools such as an enhanced Character Map which enables the use and display of special characters from fonts like STSong, HeiseiMin, Munhwa or Mkai.

Commercially available non-unicode Asian font sets come standard with files for Japanese, Korean, Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese languages. The STSong_light Simplified Chinese font supplied covers a wide range of commonly used Traditional Chinese characters and is recommended for situations where the input file will contain both Traditional and Simplified Chinese characters.

The following is a brief checklist that will prepare you to start using Asian fonts in your Create!form environment:

Prerequisites

• Windows Operating system CD
• Adobe Acrobat CD
• Create!form server (Windows) 2.7.20 (SP2) or Create!form 3.1 – PSE1 Edition
• PDFServer license

To ensure compatibility with PDF files that contain Asian text fonts, you must install the free Asian Font Pack files from the Adobe Acrobat CD or download them from http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/main.html.

NOTE: After installing fonts, you may be asked to reboot your computer.

Installing the Non-Unicode Asian Fonts

• Unzip <Required font>.zip file to the <Create!form installation dir>\Win32Bin\GS directory
• Zip files are located in the Utilities\Asian Fonts directory on the installation CD

Windows Settings on the Design Workstation
From the Windows Control Panel (options displayed may vary according to your version of Windows):

• Double-click Regional and Language Options or Regional Options.
• From the General tab, in Language settings for the system, select the languages required.
• From the General tab, in Your Locale, select the default locale that best matches your selected language option.
• To view double-byte characters in the Input Window of Create!form Designer, click the Set Default button. NOTE: This may require the installation of files from the Windows install CD, necessitating a system reboot.

Create!form Designer Settings

1. From the Main menu, select Tools, Fonts, Add
2. Navigate to the \Program Files\Create!form\Win32Bin\GS\Resource\Afm directory
3. Select the required AFM file:
   • Mkai-Medium-B5-H.afm (Traditional Chinese)
   • STSong-Light-GB-EUC-H.afm (Simplified Chinese)
   • Munhwa-Regular-KSC-EUC-H.afm (Korean)
   • HeiseiMin-W3-RKSJ-H.afm (Japanese)
4. From the Main menu, select Tools, Fonts, Map
5. From the Map Fonts dialog, map the installed font in the left column to the windows display font in the right column.
6. In the Design Window, you can now format text and variable text objects with the new fonts.
7. To view the resulting PDF correctly within Adobe or Adobe Reader, the Asian font pack must also be installed from the Adobe Installation CD.
8. Save the project.

Windows Settings on the e-forms Server

1. From the Windows Control Panel (options displayed may vary according to your version of Windows): Double-click Regional and Language Options or Regional Options.
2. From the General tab, in Language settings for the system, select the languages required. NOTE: The next step need only be performed if you experience problems viewing and printing double-byte characters on the e-forms server. This can vary according to your version of Windows.
3. From the General tab, in Your Locale, select the default locale that best matches your selected language option. NOTE: This may require the installation of files from the Windows install CD that will require a system reboot.

Transfer Projects
The fonts .dat file will be uploaded to the e-forms server when you transfer projects from the design workstation using the Tools Transfer command.

Create!form Server Settings

• If the queue outputs to a physical printer, the Create!form queue must be set to PCL output.
• For Create!form 2.7, you will need to process the job through Create!print ANYport. Direct printing from Create!form server (OS/400) will require the fonts to be loaded to the printer. (Not all printers support this option.) If the queue outputs to Create!archive port or Create!email port, the Create!form queue must be set to PDF output. PDF output requires a PDFServer license key.
• For Create!form 2.7, you will need to make a registry change to HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Print\Printers\name of printer. (OutputModule = CFOMPDF)

Using Postscript Printer Fonts
Not all printers can successfully use these postscript printer fonts. Printers require a large permanent storage device, as files required to be loaded for one font can exceed 10MB in size.

Loading Postscript Printer Fonts

• Unzip the Asian Resource.zip file to the <Create!form installation dir>\Win32Bin\GS directory
• Copy the Cjkcmaps.d2 and required matching font file to the printer from the <Create!form installation dir>\Win32Bin\GS\Resource\Printer Font directory. You can use cpPrintfile.exe to send the file to the required printer. CpPrintfile.exe can be run from the <Create!form installation dir>\Win32Bin directory.

For more information on Bottomline’s Create!form applications and modules, please contact your local Bottomline representative at 1.800.472.1321. Other common tips and techniques for Create!form customers can be found online at Create!form KnowledgeLink.