9.6 Verifying Report Output on Different Platforms

Oracle Reports 11g Release 1 (11.1.1) uses the widely available font formats like TTF and TTC on both Windows and UNIX to generate report output that in most cases looks identical on both platforms, with no configuration necessary.

Oracle Reports reads the font metrics from the appropriate TTF files to correctly format the report output. This eliminates the issue of text misalignment due to font metrics mismatches. Fonts for which TTF files are available are found automatically. Note that if a TTF font file is not found, then the font lookup mechanism reverts to the pre-11g implementation.

Run a sample TTC font type report on Windows:

  1. Open the TTC font type report in Reports Builder.

  2. Select File > Generate to File > PDF and save the output.

Run the same TTC font type report on UNIX:

  1. First check whether the TTC font used by the report is already available on the UNIX server machine in $ORACLE_INSTANCE/reports/fonts (for example, MSGOTHIC.TTC). If it is not available, copy it from the Windows machine (C:\WINDOWS\Fonts).

  2. Run the report using the following command line:

    http://host:port/report=report_name.rdf&destype=cache&desformat=pdf&userid=user/password@db

Compare the output on UNIX with that on Windows to confirm that they are almost identical.

Tip:

On UNIX, set the DPI as in Windows. For example, if you change the UNIX DPI from 96 to 600, which is the Windows DPI value, the PDF and RTF outputs on UNIX will be identical to that of Windows.

However, the HTML ouput file is large because the DPI value of the screen printer is changed. This problem occurs only if a valid printer is not set and the screen resolution (screenprinter.ppd) is used for both PDF and HTML drivers. For example, if the valid/dummy printer is set to TK_PRINTER with the DPI resolution 600, the same value as that of Windows, the HTML and PDF outputs on UNIX will be identical to that of Windows.

Example

Here is an example of how to produce report HTML output that looks the same on Windows and UNIX if the DPI of Windows is 600:

  1. If you do not have a valid printer, add the following entry in the uiprint.txt file:

    Font:ASCII: DPI changed PPD file:default.ppd:

  2. Change the Default Resolution to 600 in the datap462.ppd file as follows:

    *DefaultResolution: 600dpi

    Note:

    Do not change the resolution of screenprinter.ppd.

  3. If you have a valid printer, configure the printer in the uiprint.txt file and change the DefaultResolution to 600.

  4. Run the report after placing the fonts in the font folder.