Localization of the Configuration File (Solaris 8 Software Developer Supplement)

Solaris 8 Software Developer Supplement

Localization of the Configuration File

The idea behind configuration files is to capture the flexibility they provide when adding or changing font entries, or font group entries, as the need arises.

The system default configuration file that is used is /usr/lib/lp/locale/$LANG/mp/mp.conf where $LANG is a locale environment variable in the locale in which printing occurs. Users can have a personal configuration file that can be specified by the '-u <config.file path>' option.

The mp.conf file is used mainly for mapping the intermediate code points in a locale to the presentation forms in the encoding of the font that is used to print that code point.

Note –

A ligature or variant glyph that has been encoded as a character for compatibility is called presentation forms.

Intermediate code points can either be Wide Characters or output of the Portable Layout Services (PLS) layer. Complex Text Layout printing requires that the intermediate code points be PLS output. The default intermediate code generated by mp(1) is PLS output.

Font formats currently supported are Portable Compiled Format (PCF), TrueType, and Type1 format. Both system-resident and printer-resident Type1 fonts are supported.

mp.conf configuration file localization is for configuring mp to print according to the needs of a specific locale. The following describes the format and contents of the mp.conf configuration file for mp(1).

Lines must begin with a valid keyword (directive).
Arguments to a keyword must appear on the same line as the keyword.
Lines that begin with a “#” character are treated as comments until the end of the line.
Numeric arguments that begin with 0x are interpreted as a hexadecimal number.

The following list describes different sections in the mp.conf file.

Font Aliasing
Font Group definition
Mapping from the intermediate code ranges to the Font Group in a locale
Associating each font with the shared object that maps the intermediate code points to the presentation forms in the font encoding

Font Aliasing

This section is used to define alias names for each font used for printing. Each line in this section is of the form

keyword			font alias name		 	font type 		   font path

<keyword>

The keyword for this section is FontNameAlias.

<font alias name>

The usual convention for aliasing a font name is to specify the encoding/script name of the font followed by a letter that indicates whether the font is Roman, Bold, Italic, or BoldItalic (R, B, I or BI). For example /usr/openwin/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi/courR18.pcf.Z, since it is an iso88591 Roman font, can be given the alias name iso88591R.

<font type>

Specify PCF for .pcf fonts, Type1 for Adobe Type1 fonts, and TrueType for truetype fonts. Only these three kinds of fonts can be configured in this config. file.

<font path>

Give the absolute path name for the font files here. For type1 printer-resident fonts, just specify the font name. See the following example.

FontNameAlias			 prnHelveticaR 			 Type1  			  Helvetica

Font Group Definition

You can combine same-type fonts to form a font group. The format of the font group is as follows.

<keyword> for this section is FontGroup.
<fontgroupname> is the group name for the fonts.
<GroupType> is the font type. Create font groups for the same type of fonts only (PCF, Type1, TrueType).
<Roman> is the Roman Font name in the font group.
<Bold> is the Bold Font name in the font group.
<Italic> is the Italic Font name in the font group.
<BoldItalic> is the BoldItalic Font name in the font group.

Note –

For creating a group, only a Roman font entry is required. The Bold, Italic, and BoldItalic fonts are optional. The different types of fonts are used to display the header lines for mail/news articles. If only the Roman font is defined, it is used in place of other fonts.

Mapping From the Intermediate Code Ranges to the Font Group in a Locale

<keyword> for this section is MapCode2. Font for this section is MapCode2Font.
<range_start> is a 4–byte hex value that starts with 0x, which indicates the start of the code range to map to one or more font group.
<range_end> indicates the end of the code range to map. It can be a '-' in which case only a single intermediate code point is mapped to the target font.
<group> is a Type1, PCF, or TrueType font group, with which the presentation forms are to be printed.

Associating Each Font With the Shared Object That Maps the Intermediate Code Points to the Presentation Forms in the Fonts Encoding

<keyword> is CnvCode2Font.
<font alias name> is the alias name defined for the font.
<mapping function> takes in the intermediate code and returns presentation forms in fonts encoding, which is in turn used to get the glyph index, and draw the glyph.
<file path having mapping function> is the .so file name that contains the mapping function. You can use the utility in dumpcs to find out the intermediate codeset for EUC locales.

Note –

The Current TrueType Engine employed by mp(1) is capable of dealing only with format 4 and PlatformID 3 cmap. That is, you can only configure Microsoft .ttf files. Additionally, the character map encoding has to be Unicode or Symbol for the TrueType font engine to work correctly. Because most of the .ttf fonts in the Solaris environment are obeying these restrictions, you can map all TrueType fonts in Solaris software within the mp.conf file.

When you create a shared object for mapping a font that corresponds to an X Logical Fonts Description (XLFD) , consider the following. If you are mapping a pcf/type1 font, then create the shared object that maps from the intermediate code range to the encoding specified by XLFD. For example:

-monotype-arial-bold-r-normal-bitmap-10-100-75-75-p-54-iso8859-8

The corresponding pcf font is:

/usr/openwin/lib/locale/iso_8859_8/X11/fonts/75dpi/ariabd10.pcf.Z

This font is encoded in iso8859-8, so shared objects have to map between intermediate code and corresponding iso8859-8 code points.

But if a TrueType font with XLFD:

-monotype-arial-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-8

has the corresponding font:

/usr/openwin/lib/locale/iso_8859_8/X11/fonts/TrueType/arial__h.ttf

In this situation, map between the intermediate code and Unicode, because the cmap encoding for the previous TrueType font is in Unicode. In the example of this TrueType font, if a sample intermediate code in the en_US.UTF-8 locale that corresponds to a Hebrew character (produced by the PLS layer) is 0xe50000e9, you need to consider the following. Because the font is Unicode encoded, design the function within the corresponding .so module in such a way that when you are passing 0xe50000e9, the output corresponds to presentation form in Unicode. The example here is 0x000005d9.

The function prototype for the <mapping function> should be:

unsigned int function(unsigned int inter_code_pt)

The following are optional keyword/value pairs that you can use in mp.conf:

PresentationForm        WC/PLSOutput

The default value is PLSOutput. If the user is specifying "WC", then the intermediate code points that are generated are Wide Characters. For CTL printing, this default value should be used.

If the locale is non-CTL locale and has the value for the keyword is PLSOutput, it is ignored and the mp(1) generates wide-character codes instead.

You can use the following optional keyword/value pairs if the locale supports CTL. These variables can assume any of the possible values given on the right side of the table.

Orientation	ORIENTATION_LTR/ORIENTATION_RTL/ORIENTATION_CONTEXTUAL	Default is ORIENTATION_LTR
Numerals	NUMERALS_NOMINAL/NUMERALS_NATIONAL/NUMERALS_CONTEXTUAL	Default is NUMERALS_NOMINAL
TextShaping	TEXT_SHAPED/TEXT_NOMINAL/TEXT_SHFORM1/TEXT_SHFORM2/ TEXT_SHFORM3/TEXT_SHFORM4	Default is TEXT_SHAPED

The following example illustrates the steps that you need to follow when you add a new PCF, TrueType, or Type1 printer-resident font to the configuration file.

Replace the font for displaying characters in the range 0x00000021 - 0x0000007f with a TrueType font instead of the currently configured PCF font.

Before adding a new font, look at various components in the configuration file that correspond to the currently configured font, as shown next.

FontNameAlias   iso88591R       PCF     /usr/openwin/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi/courR18PCF.Z
FontNameAlias   iso88591B       PCF     /usr/openwin/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi/courB18PCF.Z
.
.
.
FontGroup       iso88591         PCF       iso88591R iso88591B
.
.
.
MapCode2Font    0x00000020      0x0000007f      iso88591
.
.
.
CnvCode2Font    iso88591R _xuiso88591 /usr/lib/lp/locale/$LANG/mp/xuiso88591.so
CnvCode2Font    iso88591B _xuiso88591 /usr/lib/lp/locale/$LANG/mp/xuiso88591.so

Suppose you selected /usr/openwin/lib/locale/ja/X11/fonts/TT/HG-MinchoL.ttf as your candidate for doing the mapping in the en_US.UTF-8 locale. Because this is a Unicode character-mapped TrueType font file, in the mapping function within the .so module you only need to have a function that directly returns the incoming ucs-2 code points.

unsigned short _ttfjis0201(unsigned short ucs2) {
                 return(ucs2);
         }

Save this in a ttfjis0201.c file. Create a shared object as follows.

cc -G -Kpic -o ttfjis0201.so ttfjis0201.c

But if you are mapping a PCF file, such as /usr/openwin/lib/locale/ja/X11/fonts/75dpi/gotmrk20.pcf.Z, then look in the fonts.dir file in the /usr/openwin/lib/locale/ja/X11/fonts/75dpi/ directory. Become familiar with the encoding, corresponding to XLFD, which is:

-sun-gothic-medium-r-normal--22-200-75-75-c-100-jisx0201.1976-0

If jisx0201 is the encoding, prepare a shared object that maps from ucs-2 to jisx0201. You need to obtain the mapping table for creating the .so module (if one is not already provided). For a Unicode locale, find the mappings from the many charsets to Unicode under ftp.unicode.org/pub/MAPPINGS/. Follow these mappings, in order to write a xu2jis0201.c file:

 unsigned short _xu2jis0201(unsigned short ucs2) {
                         if(ucs2 >= 0x20 && ucs2 <= 0x7d )
                                 return (ucs2);
                         if(ucs2==0x203e)
                                 return (0x7e);
                         if(ucs2 >= 0xff61 && ucs2 <= 0xff9f)
                                 return (ucs2 - 0xff60 + 0xa0);
                        return(0);
                 }

When you create a mapping file, include all the UCS-2 to jisx0201 cases.

cc  -G -o xu2jis0201.so xu2jis0201.c

This example creates a shared object file.

Add this font by adding the following lines to the corresponding sections of mp.conf. The following example shows how to add the TrueType font. The PCF font follows the same pattern except that you change the keyword to PCF instead of TrueType.

FontNameAlias   jis0201R TrueType
/home/fn/HG-Minchol.ttf
FontGroup     jus0201        TrueType  		jis0201R
MapCode2Font		 	0x0020 	0x007f 		jis0201
CnvCode2Font  		jis0201R 		 _ttfjis0201 <.so path>

# this line needs to be deleted from mp.conf before adding.

MapCode2Font    0x0020  0x007f  jis0201 CnvCode2Font
jis0201R  _ttfjis0201 <.so path>

where the .so path points to the xu2jis0201.so file.

Invoking mp(1) with the changed mp.conf file causes the range 0x0020-0x007f to be printed in the new font. Map the other Japanese character ranges too with the same .so file, for example, the range 0x0000FF61 0x0000FF9F.

To maintain backward compatibility, the /usr/openwin/lib/locale/$LANG/print/prolog.ps file, if it exists, is used to create output in the current locale, where $LANG is one of the locale components. In that situation, no configuration file mechanism is used.

Refer to /usr/lib/lp/locale/en_US.UTF-8/mp/mp.conf, which is a sample mp.conf file.