Same as with displaying unicode you need to configure support for unicode on every level
Unicode is supported by DDS and SQL. In SQL it needs to be declared as GRAPHIC or VARGRAPHIC with a corresponding CCSID. In DDS unicode field needs the graphic data type (G) and a corresponding CCSID, 1200 or 13488.
At the program level the variables need to be defined with a corresponding 'CCSID
' keyword.
dcl-s buffer char(1048576) ccsid(*utf8);
The fields in the record needs the data type GRAPHIC (G) and a corresponding CCSID, 1200 or 13488).
As the same printer file is used for multiple languages a unicode field is configure (with GRAPHIC data type) we don't want to convert the data to the CCSID of the printer file so we neet to add the parameter *NOCONVERT
.
A R I18NEXPR1 A LINE 60G 3SPACEB(1) A FONTNAME('Verdana' A (*POINTSIZE 12.0)) A CCSID(13488 *NOCONVERT)
The printer file needs *AFPDS as the device type and for testing we want to create a PDF from it.
CHGPRTF FILE(I18NEXP1) DEVTYPE(*AFPDS) TOSTMF('/home/mihael/unicode-test.pdf') WSCST(*PDF)
And now comes the tricky part. The font also needs to have a glyph for the unicode characters we used. So first a font with unicode characters is needed and the system has some requirements to it.
There are several pages in the IBM Knowledge Center about it.
I ended up put a true type font file into a folder in the IFS , /usr/local/fonts/ttf/ , and put that path to the env var with the following command:
ADDENVVAR ENVVAR(QIBM_FONT_RESOURCES_PATH) VALUE('/usr/local/fonts/ttf')