## Printer Device Driver

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### Converting PPDs with Special Characters (Using PPDENC.EXE)

PPD files are usually provided in IsoLatin1 and WindowsANSI encoding, which are not compatible with the OS/2 code page. Of course, this only affects languages that make use of special characters - like French or Spanish. If you only use English PPDs, you will not need to use this utility.

If PPDs are used for the languages that contain these special characters, conversion of the PPD file to an OS/2 compatible codepage will be required before importing. Failure to do so will result in the display of incorrect characters in OS/2.

NOTE: This step needs to be completed before importing the PPDs into the driver (before you copy the downloaded PPD files into your PPD\ directory).

* PPDENC can convert single file:

            >PPDENC.EXE <input_ppd_file> <output_ppd_file>

The input file will be read and the output file will be created. The output file name must be different than the input file name.

* PPDENC can convert multiple files in one directory, writing the converted files to the destination directory (directory must exist):

           >PPDENC.EXE -d <source_directory> <dest_directory>

Files (*.PPD) in the source directory will be processed file by file and the output files will be created in destination directory.

Currently supported PPD encoding standards are "IsoLatin1" and "WindowsANSI". PPDENC will automatically detect encoding in PPD from which to convert.

When the PPD is converted, the output file will have its *LanguageEncoding set to "OS2-850" to indicate that it's been processed. If the PPDENC utility later sees this, it will not attempt to change the encoding and will copy the file intact. Similar, if the PPD encoding is not recognized, the PPD file will just be copied over without modification.

PPDENC does not modify it's input files in any way.

*** Sample scenario ***

You have a Spanish PPD that has been downloaded from the WWW and want to include it in your driver distribution. First, you need to convert it to an OS/2 codepage.

           >PPDENC IsoLatin1 spanish.ppd spanish2.ppd

This will create spanish2.ppd that will be encoded in an OS/2 codepage.

Now spanish2.ppd can be copied into your PPD directory (as d:\PSDRIVER\PPD) and then you can import the PPD files into the PSCRIPT driver (see steps 3-6 in: Importing a New PPD ).