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Home » Newsletter » September 2009

By V. Subhash

One of our PDFOne (for Java) users wrote to us:

I am trying to create a simple PDF with the text "Mére". The problem is that my pdf does not contain this text, but "M(some characters)re." The same thing happens with all French characters. I want to know if there is a way to create the pdf correctly.

I had faced a similar problem with Classic ASP and the solution then was to switch to Unicode in the text editor. So, I tried a similar approach with Eclipse. I also used a font that supported French characters. And, it worked!

In Eclipse, go the Project menu, select Properties » Info » Text File Encoding » Other » UTF-8. You can choose any of the other available Unicode options too, but you should be careful when do this. Your existing code might become unreadable. If it does happen that way, then switch back to your original setting. You might be able to get back your original code.)

Now, Eclipse will able to store non-English text without any problem. To try it, write some non-English text to a PDF document using methods such as PdfDocument.WriteText().

Here is some sample code. I copied the non-English text from news reports. I have no idea what they mean. Pardon moi.

import java.io.IOException;
import com.gnostice.pdfone.PDFOne;
import com.gnostice.pdfone.PdfDocument;
import com.gnostice.pdfone.PdfException;
import com.gnostice.pdfone.PdfWriter;
import com.gnostice.pdfone.encodings.PdfEncodings;
import com.gnostice.pdfone.fonts.PdfFont;


public class Write_Non_English_Text_To_PDF { 
  static  {
    PDFOne.activate("your-pdfone-activation-key",
                    "your-pdfone-product-key");
  }

  public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException, PdfException {
    PdfDocument doc = new PdfDocument();
        
    PdfFont fontArial 
       = PdfFont.create("C:\\WINDOWS\\Fonts\\ARIAL.TTF", // font file 
                        10,  // font size 
                        PdfEncodings.UTF_16BE, // font encoding
                        PdfFont.EMBED_SUBSET); // font embedding
    PdfFont fontLatha 
       = PdfFont.create("C:\\WINDOWS\\Fonts\\latha.ttf",  
                        10,   
                        PdfEncodings.UTF_16BE, 
                        PdfFont.EMBED_SUBSET); 
    PdfFont fontArialUnicodeMS 
       = PdfFont.create("C:\\WINDOWS\\Fonts\\ARIALUNI.TTF",  
                        10,   
                        PdfEncodings.UTF_16BE, 
                        PdfFont.EMBED_SUBSET); 
    PdfFont fontSimHei 
       = PdfFont.create("C:\\WINDOWS\\Fonts\\simhei.ttf",  
                        10,   
                        PdfEncodings.UTF_16BE, 
                        PdfFont.EMBED_SUBSET); 
    PdfFont fontTunga 
       = PdfFont.create("C:\\WINDOWS\\Fonts\\Tunga.ttf",  
                        10,   
                        PdfEncodings.UTF_16BE, 
                        PdfFont.EMBED_SUBSET); 
    PdfFont fontMangal 
       = PdfFont.create("C:\\WINDOWS\\Fonts\\mangal.ttf",  
                        10,   
                        PdfEncodings.UTF_16BE, 
                        PdfFont.EMBED_SUBSET); 
    PdfFont fontKartiga 
       = PdfFont.create("C:\\WINDOWS\\Fonts\\Kartika.ttf",  
                        10,   
                        PdfEncodings.UTF_16BE, 
                        PdfFont.EMBED_SUBSET); 
        
    
    String strFrench 
        = "On leur promettait l'enfer. Mais les Bleus n'ont pas flanché.";    
    String strRussian 
        = "С мая по август на территории Кировской области были ";
    String strNihongo 
        = "日々の試合、世界意識を　サッカー日本代表チーム";
    String strMandarin 
        = "多元文化教學　開啟學童大視野";
    String strKannada 
        = "ಮಳೆಯ ಹನಿಗಳೊಡನೆ";    
    String strHindi 
        = "अंग्रेजी का आसमान";
    String strMalayalam 
        = "പൈലറ്റുമാരുടെ പണിമുടക്ക്‌ ഗള്‍ഫ്‌ യാത്രക്കാര്‍ വലയുന്നു";
    String strTamizh 
        = "அட்லாண்டாவில் தமிழர் அமைப்பு நடத்திய மருத்துவ முகாம்";    
    
    
    doc.writeText(strFrench, fontArial, 150,50);        
    doc.writeText(strRussian, fontArial, 150,100);
    doc.writeText(strNihongo, fontArialUnicodeMS, 150,150);
    doc.writeText(strMandarin, fontSimHei, 150,200);
    doc.writeText(strKannada, fontTunga, 150,250);
    doc.writeText(strHindi, fontMangal, 150,300);
    doc.writeText(strTamizh, fontLatha, 150,350);            
    doc.writeText(strMalayalam, fontKartiga, 150,400);


    doc.setOpenAfterSave(true);
    doc.save("Write_Non_English_Text_To_PDF.pdf");
    doc.close();
  }
}

And, here is the PDF output.

French and Russian strings look all right. So, European users should do fine.

Asian users will have to go through a trial-and-error process to find the best font for their language. I got Hindi, Kannada, Chinese and Japanese working all right after trying default fonts installed with Windows and some downloaded from the Internet. Tamil and Malayalam are only ones that are holding out.

Please Note

• Get the latest versions of the fonts for optimal support.
• Before using or embedding a font in a document, please check whether the font's license permits your use.