Re: 5250 And Unicode

[Scott Klement <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

hi Rich,

Not sure if all of the answers you sought have been given in this thread 
or not, though I noticed several were:

1) To display Unicode on 5250, you need iSeries Access for Web. 
Traditional 5250 emulators only support EBCDIC (not Unicode).

2) To convert from UCS-2 (that's what 13488 is) to EBCDIC, you can use 
RPG's %char() BIF.  It's very simple.

      DisplayField = %Char(DatabaseField);

This disadvantage to this (vs. using iSeries Access for web, or using a 
more modern display method) is that UCS-2 supports approx 40000 
different characters.  EBCDIC supports about 200.  That means there's a 
potential for your database field to contain one of the 39800 characters 
that simply don't exist in EBCDIC.  Using a true Unicode display device 
(such as a well-written app or web page) doesn't have this problem.

3) Another approach that does not use RPG, is to build a logical file 
over the UCS-2 fields, but in the logical redefine the field as EBCDIC. 
 In this case, the database manager will automatically do the 
conversion when reading from the file.

4) Finally, if you really want to code it yourself (so as to have 
maximum control over how the translation is done) I would recommend the 
iconv() API.  It's a better choice than CDRCVRT/QTQCVRT, in my opinion.

If you're using ILE RPG, I could provide an example -- but you didn't 
say which language you're coding for.

Hope that helps...



On 4/30/2012 12:47 PM, Rich Loeber wrote:
>     I have a database file that contains GRAPHICS fields that appear to be
>     unicode.  A DSPFFD shows the fields with the following settings:
>
>             Coded Character Set Identifier  . . . . . :  13488
>             UCS2 or Unicode conversion  . . . . . . . :  *CONVERT
>
>     I can see the field contents when I look at them through SQL from
>     iNavigator, but I want to be able to show the field contents in a 5250
>     display.
>
>     I've been searching the archives, but nothing jumps out at me.  I'm
>     running V5R4 and I don't see this CCSID available when I look at the
>     configuration options on the terminal emulator (Personal Communcations).
>
>     Any idea where to look for this?  I just want to convert the fields for
>     display purposes.  No data entry requirements.
>
>     Rich Loeber - @richloeber
>     Kisco Information Systems
>     http://www.kisco.com