Configuring Reports Managed Server Enabling HTTPS for Oracle Reports

Part III Part III Managing Runtime Behavior Part III contains information that will help you to manage the runtime behavior of Oracle Reports: ■ Chapter 9, Managing Fonts in Oracle Reports ■ Chapter 10, Printing on UNIX with Oracle Reports ■ Chapter 11, Using PDF in Oracle Reports ■ Chapter 12, Font Model and Cross-Platform Deployment ■ Chapter 13, Configuring Destinations for Oracle Reports Services ■ Chapter 14, Configuring and Using the Pluggable Data sources ■ Chapter 15, Securing Oracle Reports Services ■ Chapter 17, Configuring and Administering OracleAS Single Sign-On ■ Chapter 16, Deploying Reports in Oracle Portal 9 Managing Fonts in Oracle Reports 9-1 9 Managing Fonts in Oracle Reports This chapter provides information about fonts in Oracle Reports: ■ Using Fonts ■ Adding Fonts ■ Font Configuration Files ■ Font Aliasing ■ Font Types ■ Verifying Report Output on Different Platforms ■ Running a Unicode Report using TTFTTC Fonts ■ Diagnosing Font Issues ■ Troubleshooting Font Issues

9.1 Using Fonts

In Oracle Reports, fonts come into play in several areas: ■ Fonts in Oracle Reports Builder at build time ■ Fonts in Report Output at runtime ■ Fonts in the User Interface

9.1.1 Fonts in Oracle Reports Builder

Oracle Reports Builder provides a list of fonts that are available on the system in the font picker box. Figure 9–1 Font list in Oracle Reports Builder On Windows, the font list is derived from the fonts that are installed on the system along with the fonts available on the current default printer. A small printer icon before the font name identifies printer fonts. True Type fonts are associated with a TTF icon. On UNIX, the font list is derived by querying the X-server display on which the application is running for the available fonts. The command is similar to the UNIX xlsfonts command, which lists all of the available fonts for the X-server display. 9-2 Publishing Reports to the Web with Oracle Reports Services From this font list, Oracle Reports Builder generates a list of usable fonts with the valid style, weight, width, size, and encoding characteristics to match the character set. The character set is driven by the NLS_LANG environment variable. Oracle Reports Builder includes only those fonts with an encoding of iso8859-1, unless specified differently in the toolkit resource file, Tk2MotiffontMapCs. For more information on Tk2MotiffontMapCs, refer to Section 9.3, Font Configuration Files .

9.1.2 Fonts in Report Output

During report formatting, fonts associated with the layout objects are first checked against the font alias file, uifont.ali, refer to Section 9.3, Font Configuration Files . If an entry in the font alias file is found, the mapped font is used instead of the original one. The mapped font is then searched for in the list of fonts available on the system or printer. If a particular font is not found, Oracle Reports will look for the nearest matching font under the same character set which can be used instead. With the new font model supported on UNIX in 11g Release 1 11.1.1, report output is in most cases the same on UNIX as on Windows, allowing for simplified cross-platform deployment. Oracle Reports reads the font metrics from the appropriate TTF files from the font directory 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. With the new font model, there is no change in the builder. The Font Model does a role only during the runtime and not at the design time.

9.1.2.1 Font lookup

On Windows, the font lookup mechanism is simple due to the availability of printer drivers, which have the capability of uploading fonts from the system as needed. Any output from Oracle Reports running on Windows will contain fonts from either one of the following: ■ The system ■ The printer For this reason, Oracle Reports considers both the printer and the system fonts when looking for the available fonts. On UNIX, the fonts available for generating output are either one of the following: ■ the fonts available on the printer, specifically the fonts defined in the PPD or TFM files ■ if no printer is specified, the fonts available in ScreenPrinter, screenprinter.ppd. ■ the TTF font used in the layout objects is used to calculate metrics, which prevents misalignment in the multibyte language report output. See Also: ■ Section 9.3, Font Configuration Files ■ Section 10.8.1, ScreenPrinter ■ Section 12.2.1, Font Lookup Managing Fonts in Oracle Reports 9-3

9.1.3 Fonts in the User Interface

Text in the user interface of Oracle Reports Builder, like the window title, menu items, message boxes, and data model object names, use fonts taken from the system resource files for the current language. These system resource files are supplied with Oracle Reports installation. In Oracle Reports, you can map these fonts in the [rwbuilder] section of uifont.ali. If found, the mapped font is used instead of the original font. Otherwise, Oracle Reports uses the original font. On UNIX, these fonts are defined in Tk2Motif.rgb under Tk2MotiffontList. If the font is not defined, then the default font fixed for default character set is used instead. The default system font need not be the one defined in Tk2Motif.rgb. If the defined font does not match the character set on which the application is running, some other available font will be used following the font lookup algorithm discussed in the previous section. In order to maintain the look and feel of the Windows, Oracle Reports makes extensive use of the system font, which is obtained from the Windows system parameters. For non-Unicode environments, the font is obtained from the icon objects. You can change it by modifying the fonts through Display Property Appearance. Select Icon from the drop down box and select the desired font name and size. For Japanese Unicode systems, the font is MS Gothic. For Korean, its MS Sans Serif. For simplified, traditional, and Hong Kong its Arial. For other languages, its Lucida Sans Unicode. You can also change the Windows tool tip font by changing the icon font as described above. This change is not completely reflected across Oracle Reports Builder because some tool tip fonts are taken from the resource file. In Oracle Reports, fonts for the Web Source view are selected by making an entry in the alias file under the [rwbuilder] section. The entry required for this change should only be aliased to the character set and not to any specific font. For example, if you want to use Arial Unicode MS when NLS_LANG is set to UTF8, then you should create an entry like this one: .....UTF8 = Arial Unicode MS..... Refer to Section 9.4, Font Aliasing for more information. The supported styles are: Plain, Italic, Oblique, Underline, Outline, Shadow, Inverted, Overstrike, and Blink. The supported weights are: Ultralight, Extralight, Light, Demilight, Medium, Demibold, Bold, Extrabold, and Ultrabold. You should not use fonts with a weight of Regular because this weight is not supported and may cause Oracle Reports Builder to display undesirable results.

9.2 Adding Fonts

In Oracle Reports, fonts can be added for use: ■ At build time in Oracle Reports Builder ■ At runtime in the output ■ In the user interface Note: You must restart the Reports Server after adding fonts to the Reports font directory. 9-4 Publishing Reports to the Web with Oracle Reports Services

9.2.1 Adding Fonts to Oracle Reports Builder

To build a report in a certain font, the font must be available in Oracle Reports Builder from the font picker when you are designing the report. In order for the fonts to appear in the font picker, the fonts should be added to the system or the display on which Oracle Reports Builder is running. Please review your operating system documentation for adding fonts before attempting this procedure. To add Type1 fonts on UNIX: 1. Get the font-related files from the vendor. These include the PFB, PFA, and the AFM files. 2. Convert the PFB binary file to PFA ASCII font using one of the available convertors. Typically, you can get such converters as shareware, for example, t1ascii. 3. Copy the PFA files to the directory where the fonts have to be installed following the instructions for our platform. 4. Verify the installation of the fonts by entering the xlsfonts -u command. This command lists all the fonts that are available for that system. If you are using a UNIX emulator like reflection X, the fonts installed on the system may not appear in the xlsfonts command. The reason for this behavior is that it is taking fonts from the font path or the font server, which is configured for this emulator. If using a font server, ensure that, after installing the font, you add the font directory to the font server configuration file and restart the font server. In the emulator, specify the font path to this font server wherever the fonts are installed. If you are still not able to see the fonts in xlsfonts, ensure that the new font directory is the first element of the catalogue in the configuration file. Figure 9–2 xlsfonts sample output

5. Start Oracle Reports Builder on the display that points to the font server on which

these fonts are installed or to the display where the fonts are installed.

9.2.2 Adding Fonts for Report Output

For generating output in Oracle Reports, only the fonts that are specified in the printer definition file are used. To use a newly added font in your output, you should first add