Font Aliasing File Verification

Managing Fonts in Oracle Reports 9-17 ■ Helvetica ■ Courier Microsoft introduced TrueType into Windows with version 3.1 in early 1992. They created a core set of fonts: ■ Times New Roman ■ Arial ■ Courier Both Apples and Microsofts TrueType fonts showed that scalable fonts could generate bitmaps virtually as though each size had been designed by hand.

9.5.5 TrueType Collection

A TrueType Collection TTC is an efficient way of sharing common font data, such as character information and glyphs. This data sharing results in an optimized file size as the common glyphs are stored in a single file structure, instead of within each font. The end result is a single file that is a combination of two or more fonts. For example, certain Japanese fonts in a font family may share a common set of kanji characters. They can be included in a TTC file. For example, the TTC file, msgothic.ttc, is a collection file consisting of three fonts. They are MS Gothic, MS PGothic, and MS UI Gothic.

9.5.6 Barcode Fonts

Barcode fonts can be quite confusing. Some industries have chosen a specific barcode type. If this is what you need, then using the appropriate barcode font should work. For example, if you are interested in putting barcode on retail packages or books, the choice of a barcode is simple. Retail packages in North America use the UPC-A bar code. European retail articles use the EAN barcode . All book ISBN numbers use the Bookland barcode an EAN 13 bar code with a 5 digit supplement. Fonts are one way to obtain barcode, but not the only way. Oracle Reports offers another solution for producing barcodes using a Java barcode bean. The Java barcode bean is capable of creating barcodes based on the most popular barcode types.

9.5.7 CID Fonts

Character IDentifier CID fonts are a format of composite multibyte Type1 fonts used to better address the requirements of Far East markets. Adobe developed the CID-keyed font file format to support large character set fonts for use with PostScript. It is the ideal format for Chinese, Japanese, or Korean fonts and can also be used for roman fonts with very large character sets. CID-keyed refers to the character identifier CID numbers used to index and access the characters in the font. A CID character identifier font consists of a large font file containing all the character outlines and a small CMap file that contains a list of characters, encodings, and character identifiers. The combination of the font file and the CMap file yields a font that is a specific character set and encoding information. Each CID font can support many character set and encoding combinations. 9-18 Publishing Reports to the Web with Oracle Reports Services

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_INSTANCEreportsfonts 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:portreport=report_ name.rdfdestype=cachedesformat=pdfuserid=userpassworddb Compare the output on UNIX with that on Windows to confirm that they are almost identical. 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 validdummy 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 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. Note: Do not change the resolution of screenprinter.ppd.