Caveat - I am not an iSeries programmer(since 15 years ago), so please be very specific with your answer so that I can understand it. I am trying to print product labels with Simplified Chinese characters on a Zebra bar code printer from data retrieved from IBM iSeries (AS/400). The data for the label is created by an RPG ILE program in XML format (essentially a text file with 1 field). The file is defined with CCSID 935 (Simplified Chinese), which should handle mixed SBCS and DBCS. The iSeries user profile is defined to use Simplified Chinese. The iSeries session is run on a VMWare VM created to display Chinese characters. The problem I am having is converting the file from the EBCDIC to UNICODE UTF-8, which is required to print the Chinese characters on the bar code printer. The file is in an XML format because the printer has a built-in XML parser in its firmware that overlays the label format with the values in the XML file. For label fields using Chinese characters a special font is used that contains the Simplified Chinese character set (UNICODE font) in onboard flash memory. Label formats (ZPL) reside in onboard flash memory on the printer also. I have tried FTP'ing the file directly from the iSeries to the printer but the EBCDIC to UNICODE conversion did not work. I've tried CCSID's of 1208 and 13488 for the UNICODE output. I've tried outputting the XML file to the IFS so that I could FTP the file directly to the printer from there, but I haven't quite managed to generate the file in UNICODE UTF-8 on the IFS. It continues to be EBCDIC on the IFS. You can view the file from the iSeries using the EDTF command and see the Chinese characters, but viewing the file in the IFS from the desktop using NotePad++ you can only see garbage until you convert the file from EBCDIC to ASCII. I have contacted IBM Tech Support and have opened an issue. So far (several months) they have been unable to come up with a workable solution. I am hoping that someone has already encountered this or a similar issue and solved it. After all, there are a lot of companies doing business in China and some of them use the iSeries. Thanks in advance.

Software/Hardware used: