The MS Windows Font SCRIPT parameter in PROGRESS 4GL

When you select a font under Microsoft Windows, you can specify font name, size, and other options. Windows does its best to find a match. One of the things that Windows wants to know is the "script" value of the font. This parameter is related to code page. The value for script is very high priority in the Microsoft Windows font search algorithm. That is to say, Windows will look for a font that matches your script setting, and consider doing so more important than finding a matching for other parameters such as the font name. Windows would rather give you a font that supports your code page then the named font. This is a good thing in general.

When Windows added script in Win 95, Progress 4GL needed to provide the right setting for script when it assigns a font. Progress 4GL identifies the script value to use by looking at the script value of the system font. Progress 4GL then uses that value as the default value for the script parameter of any other fonts it requests from the operating system.

For example, when you run English language version of Microsoft Windows, Progress 4GL gets the script value from the default font, and then sets the script value for other font selections to that value, which will be "Western European". You can specify the script value on each of the fonts in the progress.ini file to override the default value. In addition to the numbered fonts (FONT1, FONT2, etc.) make sure you also set the script on your DEFAULT fonts and PRINTER(1,2,3) fonts.

Here is an example demonstrating the setting of the script parameter:

DefaultFont=MS Sans Serif, size=8, script=ansi
DefaultFixedFont=Courier New, size=8 script=ansi

There is more info on page 180-182 of Kano's book Developing International Software for Win95, Win NT.

Note the script parameter is only used on Microsoft Windows.

The values for script that are recognized by the PROGRESS 4GL are as follows (all quoted strings):