odl(5)								File Formats Manual							    odl(5)

NAME

       odl, ODL - On-demand font loading

DESCRIPTION

       On-demand  font	loading (ODL) is a mechanism through which a terminal or a printer can download the relevant bitmap font information for a
       user-defined character (UDC) at the time this character has to be displayed or printed by the device. A number of Compaq's  local  language
       terminals  (such as the VT382 series) and printers support ODL for languages like Japanese, Chinese, and Korean, which include user-defined
       characters.

       ODL can be implemented either through hardware or software.  In the hardware implementation of ODL, the terminal or printer  sends  a  font
       loading	request  to  the  host computer whenever the device encounters a UDC whose font information is not present in the device. The host
       computer then completes the transaction by sending to the device a font loading sequence that encodes the bitmap shape  of  the	character.
       This font information stays in the device until the font information buffer is full or the power is switched off.

       In  the	software  implementation  of ODL (SoftODL), the sending of the font loading request from the device is disabled and it is the host
       computer that keeps track of which font information has been sent to the device. When the host computer encounters a new UDC or an old  one
       whose  font information must be flushed because the font information buffer is full, the host computer sends a font loading sequence to the
       device before sending the UDC character code in the data to be displayed or printed.

       The SoftODL mechanism is supported only by the Asian tty driver, atty, and the odld daemon through the utx driver  (see	atty(7),  odld(8),
       and  utx(7)).Users  run	the cedit utility (see cedit(1)) to create and edit user-defined characters in a UDC database. The cgen command is
       used to create from the UDC database an ODL database that is used by the SoftODL mechanism.

       The SoftODL mechanism can be tuned by setting the following parameters: The ODL buffer replacement strategy

	      When the font information buffer is full, there are two ways to decide which piece of old font information  is  to  be  replaced	by
	      information for a UDC whose information is not in the buffer. They are FIFO (First-In-First-Out) and LRU (Least Recently Used).  The
	      size of the ODL font cache

	      The size of the font cache determines how much UDC font information can be kept in the device. This value  is  device-specific.  The
	      value 256 is a safe maximum for most devices, although some terminals are capable of storing font information for 700 UDCs.

       Refer to the stty(1) reference page for information on setting both these parameters and using other flags related to ODL.

       In  general,  ODL  implemented in the hardware is more accurate in terms of fetching a UDC font only when needed.  However, the overhead of
       sending font loading requests from device to host makes hardware ODL slower than software ODL.  SoftODL is faster and more flexible, but it
       has the following limitations: Some local language devices have to have the hardware On-Demand Loading flag disabled before the devices can
       be used with the SoftODL mechanism.  When a UDC is keyed in for some of the VT382 series of local language terminals, the character is also
       displayed  on  the  26th  compose line of the terminal screen. This capability depends on having the character's font loaded in the device.
       When SoftODL is being used and a UDC is entered for the first time into the terminal after power-up, the correct  font  of  that  character
       does not be display on the compose line.  Instead, a reversed wide question mark is displayed. However, the UDC will be displayed correctly
       on other parts of the screen.  If SoftODL is enabled for a terminal session and the terminal is accidentally powered off, users must  issue
       the  following  command immediately after turning on the power: This command flushes the internal tty cache to avoid a mismatch between the
       font cache of the tty and that of the terminal.	When a terminal is connected by a terminal server to several sessions, only one  of  those
       sessions should have ODL (software or hardware) enabled. If more than one session has ODL enabled, you may have to issue one of the follow-
       ing commands to avoid problems: This command flushes the internal tty cache when you return to the terminal session where SoftODL is  being
       used.   This  command  instructs  the  tty  driver  to use SoftODL for all the user-defined characters.	However, this option also prevents
       caching and slows the display of UDCs tremendously.  When users change session while SoftODL is enabled, their terminals may hang due to an
       incomplete  escape  sequence.  This  condition can be corrected by using the setup menu of the terminal and activating the "Reset Terminal"
       soft key.  Changing the terminal line discipline while SoftODL is active would cause all the SoftODL parameters stored in the tty driver to
       be  reset  to their default values.  So, SoftODL is automatically deactivated if the line discipline is changed and must be restarted after
       the change.  Users must be careful when setting the odlsize parameter of the stty command.  The optimal value for  this	parameter  is  the
       size  of  the  character  font cache in the current terminal.  Users can set a value less than or equal to the hardware parameter, but must
       never set a value larger than that.  If the stty parameter is larger than the hardware parameter,  the  SoftODL	mechanism  cannot  operate
       properly.   Care  must  also  be taken in setting the odltype parameter of the stty command. This parameter must be set to the same type as
       that of the terminal.  A mismatch between the tty driver and terminal settings can produce unexpected results.	If  the  ODL  database	is
       changed,  the change may not be reflected in any SoftODL terminal sessions that were activated prior to the change.  For the already active
       sessions to recognize any new UDC characters in the ODL database, users have to stop and then restart the SoftODL mechanism by through  the
       stty command.  This problem also exists for hardware ODL.

SEE ALSO

       Commands: cedit(1), cgen(1), stty(1), odld(8), utxd(8)

       Files: atty(7), utx(7)

																	    odl(5)