The Euro Symbol € on the 3000

By Sally Blackwell, HP

This article was sent to us, courtesy Marius Schild (marius@samco.nl) of Samco Automation who got it from Ingrid Lamandassa of HP-Netherlands. By the way, for Microsoft products, visit their Euro Symbol FAQ. And for web pages, use € €, which according to w3.org is proposed but not yet ISO standardized.

With the introduction of the Euro and the withdrawal of national banknotes in 2002, it's important that you know how to manage the Euro symbol on the HP e3000.

You can manage the Euro symbol from the HP e3000 today. As far as MPE/iX is concerned, all characters that you enter, store & print on the HP e3000 are 8-bit ASCII codes. The HP e3000 knows nothing about their meaning, it simply accepts them, stores them, sorts them, and outputs them. No changes need to be made to the HP e3000 or MPE/iX to achieve this. However, to input and output the Euro symbol, you must have printers and terminals or terminal emulators which can handle the Euro symbol.

HP has implemented the Euro by modifying the HP Roman-8 character set. It has replaced the 'Universal Currency Character' (otherwise known as the 'sputnik'), with the Euro symbol. This is at position decimal 186 (hex $ba). The resultant character set is known as HP Roman-9, and any peripheral connected to the HP e3000 that is to be used for input or output of the Euro symbol must support it.

In order to input the Euro, your input device must support the HP Roman-9 character set. Input devices on the HP e3000 are now normally terminal emulators, but the text terminal C1099A also allows support of the Euro symbol.

One of the most widely-used terminal emulators on the HP e3000 is Reflection from WRQ. Reflection supports the HP Roman-9 character set from version 7.0 onward. The character set can be configured by choosing the Setup menu, selecting Terminal, then clicking on the Emulation tab. If you have a suitable version of Reflection, you will find HP Roman-9 in the drop-down menu of Host Character Set. Once configured, Reflection can be tested by typing AltGr+4 (press the AltGr key, hold it down, and press 4) or AltGr+e. If you don't have an AltGr key, use the right-hand Alt key. On standard US keyboards, the keyboard sequence is ALT+0128 (i.e., hold down ALT while you type 0128, when you release the ALT key the Euro should appear).

A Euro should be displayed on your screen. If it is not, then you also need to update your Windows keyboard driver. This is a very simple process; downloads and installation instructions can be found at

www.microsoft.com/windows/euro.asp

Once entered, the HP e3000 will store characters in 8-bit bytes. The code for the Euro is decimal #186 or hexadecimal $ba. To examine the hexadecimal content of a file, you can use the following command:

:FCOPY FROM=MYFILE;TO=;HEX;CHAR

For Suprtool: IN MYFILE;LIST HEX,CHAR;XEQ

The other thing the HP e3000 will do with a stored Euro is to sort it. The Euro takes the place of the International Currency Symbol in the HP Roman-9 character set, and therefore sorts to the same place as that character. This sort order position is appropriate for the Euro, so no changes were made.

To be useful, the Euro symbol must be output to printers. Once again, the printer must be able to use the HP Roman-9 character set. Whilst new HP printers are able to support the HP Roman-9 character set, you may have to make modifications to your older printers.

For Windows-only applications, there are free downloadable fonts available, but for non-Windows applications, which include those on the hp e3000, then a hardware solution is needed. You can buy small cards (called DIMM/SIMM modules) that contain built-in fonts with the Roman-9 character set. These are customer-installable and low-cost.

Once the DIMM/SIMM module is installed into your printer, you may be able to configure the HP Roman-9 character set from the printer's front panel. If this is not possible, an escape sequence can be included in either the spoolfile, the environment file or in the printer's setup file.

The escape sequence is Esc(4U - where Esc means the escape character. To include it in an environment file or a setup file, perform the following steps:

1. Use a text editor to create a one-line unnumbered flat file that contains this escape sequence.

:EDITOR
/A
1       Esc(4U
2       //
/K CSROMAN9.PUB.SYS,UNN;E

2. To use this as a setup file on a networked printer, enter it as a setup file in NPCONFIG.PUB.SYS. Eg.

104     (network_address = 12.345.67.89
pjl_supported = false
jam_recovery = false
setup_file = csroman9.pub.sys)

3. To use this as an environment file in a file equation, issue the following command:

:FILE OUTFILE;DEV=LJ104;ENV=CSROMAN9.PUB.SYS

The escape sequence can also be included in a termtype file. The method for this is documented in the 'Customizing Terminal and Printer Type Files with Workstation Configurator' manual (part 32022-90031 downloadable from http://docs.hp.com).

Once you have configured your input and output devices correctly, you and your hp e3000 will be ready for 2002.

Note: for more information on the Euro symbol in Reflection products, visit the WRQ Euro Symbol web page which also links to other technical notes on their site.