Your TN3270 terminal emulator must be able to support the Arabic EBCDIC 420 code page in order to connect to your enterprise server region that has Arabic support enabled. Micro Focus has tested this support with IBM's Personal Communications emulator (PCOMM); visit the following external link to the IBM documentation for details on how to configure a PCOMM session for Arabic input - Configuring Sessions.
Support of Arabic code sets can require special consideration when the 'Lam Alef ' character combinations are used, when the terminal emulator is set in its Arabic right-to-left input mode.
Entry of those two characters results in a conversion to a ligature represented by a one-byte EBCDIC code point followed by an EBCDIC space (0x40). When using PCOMM, on entering this combination, the cursor should be automatically positioned one space to the left in order to account for the additional space. It is possible to move the cursor back to the right, to remove this space, but removing it can cause problems when converting to ASCII. If the space is removed, the translation results in the 0x1A ASCII substitution character being used. (However, when converting back to EBCDIC in this situation, the correct ligature code and EBCDIC space is restored.)
If your emulator does not add the additional space automatically, you must ensure it is added manually; otherwise, as above, you will encounter problems with translation.
| Visual EBCDIC 420 | Logical ASCII 1256 | Description |
|---|---|---|
| B8 40 | E1 C7 | Lam isolated form + Alef isolated form |
| B2 40 | E1 C2 | Lam isolated form + Alef with Madda above isolated form |
| B4 40 | E1 C3 | Lam isolated form + Alef with Hanza above isolated form |
| B9 40 | E1 C7 | Lam isolated form + Alef Final form |
| B3 40 | E1 C2 | Lam isolated form + Alef with Madda Final form |
| B5 40 | E1 C3 | Lam isolated form + Alef with Hanza Final form |