html to pdf convert, cyrillic characters not displayed properly

Question

I have a problem with pdf fonts. I have used a method for generating pdf from html which worked fine on my local machine which is windows OS, but now on linux Cyrillic text is displayed with question marks. I checked for fonts there but it turned out that there were required fonts. Now I switched to another method which is shown below.

    Document document = new Document(PageSize.A4);
    String myFontsDir = "C:\\";
    String filePath = AppProperties.downloadLocation + "Order_" + orderID + ".pdf";
    try {
        OutputStream file = new FileOutputStream(new File(filePath));
        PdfWriter writer = PdfWriter.getInstance(document, file);
        int iResult = FontFactory.registerDirectory(myFontsDir);
        if (iResult == 0) {
            System.out.println("TestPDF(): Could not register font directory " + myFontsDir);
        } else {
            System.out.println("TestPDF(): Registered font directory " + myFontsDir);
        }

        document.open();
        String htmlContent = "<html><head>"
                + "<meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"application/xhtml+xml; charset=UTF-8\"/>"
                + "</head>"
                + "<body>"
                + "<h4 style=\"font-family: arialuni, arial; font-size:16px; font-weight: normal; \" >"
                + "Здраво Kristijan!"
                + "</h4></body></html>";
        InputStream inf = new ByteArrayInputStream(htmlContent.getBytes("UTF-8"));

        XMLWorkerFontProvider fontImp = new XMLWorkerFontProvider(myFontsDir);
        FontFactory.setFontImp(fontImp);
        XMLWorkerHelper.getInstance().parseXHtml(writer, document, inf, null, null, fontImp);

        document.close();
        System.out.println("Done.");
    } catch (Exception e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
    }

with this peace of code I am able to generate proper pdf from latin text, but cyrillic is displayed with weird characters. This happens on Windows, I haven't yet test it on Linux. Any advice for encoding or font?

Thanks in advance

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 17 '15 at 13:07

First this: it is very hard to believe that your font directory is C:\\. You are assuming that you have a file with path C:\\arialuni.ttf whereas I assume that the path to MS Arial Unicode is C:\\windows\fonts\arialuni.ttf.

Secondly: I don't think arialuni is the correct name. I'm pretty sure it's arial unicode ms. You can check this by running this code:

XMLWorkerFontProvider fontProvider = new XMLWorkerFontProvider(XMLWorkerFontProvider.DONTLOOKFORFONTS);
fontProvider.register("c:/windows/fonts/arialuni.ttf");
for (String s : fontProvider.getRegisteredFamilies()) {
    System.out.println(s);
}

The output should be:

courier
arial unicode ms
zapfdingbats
symbol
helvetica
times
times-roman

These are the values you can use; arialuni isn't one of them.

Also: aren't you defining the character set in the wrong place?

I have slightly adapted your source code in the sense that I stored the HTML in an HTML file cyrillic.html:

<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="application/xhtml+xml; charset=UTF-8"/>
</head>
<body>
<h4 style="font-family: Arial Unicode MS, FreeSans; font-size:16px; font-weight: normal; " >Здраво Kristijan!</h4>
</body>
</html>

Note that I replaced arialuni with Arial Unicode MS and that I used FreeSans as an alternative font. In my code, I used FreeSans.ttf instead of arialttf.

See ParseHtml11:

public static final String DEST = "results/xmlworker/cyrillic.pdf";
public static final String HTML = "resources/xml/cyrillic.html";
public static final String FONT = "resources/fonts/FreeSans.ttf";

public void createPdf(String file) throws IOException, DocumentException {
    // step 1
    Document document = new Document();
    // step 2
    PdfWriter writer = PdfWriter.getInstance(document, new FileOutputStream(file));
    // step 3
    document.open();
    // step 4
    XMLWorkerFontProvider fontImp = new XMLWorkerFontProvider(XMLWorkerFontProvider.DONTLOOKFORFONTS);
    fontImp.register(FONT);
    FontFactory.setFontImp(fontImp);
    XMLWorkerHelper.getInstance().parseXHtml(writer, document,
            new FileInputStream(HTML), null, Charset.forName("UTF-8"), fontImp);
    // step 5
    document.close();
}

As you can see, I use the Charset when parsing the HTML. The result looks like this:

enter image description here

If you insist on using Arial Unicode, just replace this line:

public static final String FONT = "resources/fonts/FreeSans.ttf";

With this one:

public static final String FONT = "c:/windows/fonts/arialuni.ttf";

I have tested this on a Windows machine and it works too:

enter image description here

Thank you for the response. It's true what you wrote, I intentionally left that path and my font is indeed arialuini.ttf. Anyway, I solve the problem, which it turned out to be that my Linux machine didn't properly installed my fonts. Thank you man, you helped me earlier with this problem! — Kristijan Iliev, Jun 17 '15 at 15:08
Hi @Chris, I see from your reputation that you are an experienced user, why wouldn't you accept the answer if it helped you? — Alexey Subach, Jul 08 '16 at 20:51
@AlexeySubach I must have forgotten at the time. Thanks for the remainder — Kristijan Iliev, Jul 11 '16 at 06:17
@Bruno Lowagie, What if we dont have file ? just a plain text? not file — Aliy, Jul 10 '19 at 09:07

html to pdf convert, cyrillic characters not displayed properly

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