Search code examples
phpunicodetruetypepdflib

pdflib certain unicode characters not rendering

I need to compose a pdf using pdflib version 8, In which I need to print certain unicode characters

𝑎 𝑥

But they are not getting rendered ,Instead below characters are displaying

€

What could be the reason & How can I render the characters?

Below is the code

$p = PDF_new();

/*  open new PDF file; insert a file name to create the PDF on disk */
if (PDF_begin_document($p, "", "") == 0) {
    die("Error: " . PDF_get_errmsg($p));
}
PDF_set_info($p, "Creator", "Abc");
PDF_set_info($p, "Author", "Abc");
PDF_set_info($p, "Title", "Test");
pdf_set_option($p, "textformat=utf8");

PDF_begin_page_ext($p, 595, 842, "");
$fontdir = '/usr/share/fonts/truetype/dejavu';
pdf_set_parameter($p, "FontOutline", "Dejavu=$fontdir/DejaVuSans.ttf");
$font = pdf_load_font($p, "Dejavu", "unicode","");

PDF_setfont($p, $font, 24.0);
PDF_set_text_pos($p, 50, 700);
pdf_show_xy($p,"dejb €",100,490);
pdf_show_xy($p,"dejb 𝑥 𝑎",200,490);
PDF_end_page_ext($p, "");

PDF_end_document($p, "");

$buf = PDF_get_buffer($p);
$len = strlen($buf);

header("Content-type: application/pdf");
header("Content-Length: $len");
header("Content-Disposition: inline; filename=hello.pdf");
print $buf;

PDF_delete($p);

Output

enter image description here

Edit:

Tried using freesans font instead of dejavu, but no change in the output.

$fontdir = '/usr/share/fonts/truetype/freefont';
pdf_set_parameter($p, "FontOutline", "FreeSans=$fontdir/FreeSans.ttf");
$font = pdf_load_font($p, "FreeSans", "unicode","")
Solution

  • You can solve your problem by using a font that contains the required glyphs. When you check the page of your linked page "MATHEMATICAL ITALIC SMALL A" you can see a link to the "Fonts that support U+1D44E":

    As you can see, just a few fonts support this glyph, for example "DejaVu Serif Italic". When I use DejaVu Serif Italic (DejaVuSerif-Italic.ttf) from the DejaVu package I get the expected output:

    enter image description here

    Of course also other fonts might support this glyphs and you are not limited to DejaVuSans Serif.

    Just one note to your code: The line:

    pdf_set_option($p, "textformat=utf8");

    requires PDFlib 9. Please use 

    PDF_set_parameter($p, "textformat", "utf8");

    instead.