Using UTF text by ImageMagick

Question

I use Ubuntu 14.0.4. I want to use a file with UTF8 by a command of ImageMagick. Here you can see:

If the UTF-8 text you wanting to draw has already been generated you can read it directly from a file using '@filename'.For example here I create a Chinese label from a UTF-8 encoded Chinese text file (without a final newline in the file).

 convert -background lightblue -fill blue -pointsize 48 \
          -font ZenKaiUni label:@chinese_words.utf8   label_utf8.gif

Now I test a command that is look like above command for a text file with name label1.txt which it's content is a Persian word:

سلام

Command is:

convert -background lightblue -fill blue -pointsize 48 label:@label1.txt   label_utf8.png

But I got this image:

You can see ? characters instead of desired ones. How can I solve this problem?

Answer 1

Firstly, you need to specify the font for ImageMagick to use, so you want something like:

convert -background lightblue -fill blue -pointsize 48 -font XYZ ...

In order to make sure that your selected font is known to ImageMagick, you need to look in the list of known fonts:

identify -list font

or, more specifically in your case:

identify -list font | grep -i Kacst

If the font is listed, use that name. If not listed, refer to this answer.