Re: reportlab-users Digest, Vol 112, Issue 14

Hi everyone,

I'll answer inline to each of the answers and try to remove the cruft...


> Sending this backup to the listserv as a response - removing the image as
> it was 'too large'.  My apologies if this gets double-posted.
>
> -j
>
> On Wed, May 29, 2013 at 12:39 PM, J. R. Carroll <[email protected]>
> wrote:
>
> > Mike,
> >
> > Not sure, but if you are trying to get the 'funky P' shape you emailed
> > about a few weeks back (as in the image I am attaching [EDIT] IMAGE
> > REMOVED) - that's easy enough (but I'm assuming this is a different
> > issue)...
>

Actually, it is still the funky "P" thing I mentioned earlier, but I never
received much of a response then. I got one digest that seemed to be
commenting on someone's answer, but I couldn't find the actual answer.
Fortunately, at the time, no one at my company cared about the "P", but it
seems I need to re-implement this after all and now it's important again.



> >
> > If you are trying to get a semi-colon, I don't believe E13-B as a
> standard
> > has that (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:MICR.svg and its parent
> > article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_ink_character_recognition
> ).
> >  On inspection of the "demo" fonts available via the links you provided
> (as
> > I would love to help *the Mr. Driscoll* of
> > http://www.blog.pythonlibrary.org/, I can't afford the $$ to buy the
> > legit font, no offense =P),


I figured you could use the Demo font...



> they say they only omit 7. 8. and 9 with no
> > mention of omitting a semi-colon.  Furthermore, inspecting the
> > character/glyph map of the demo fonts show that there is no mapping for
> > semi-colon key-strokes to a comp micr/e13b glyph.  If you are truly
> trying
> > to get a semi-colon, my guess is that you'll have to switch fonts
> > mid-string (or make your own glyph for the semi-colon - aka copy one
> over).
> >
> >
> > If, for whatever reason you were trying to get the 'funky P' you
> mentioned
> > in previous listserv questions, that symbol is mapped to the double-quote
> > key (as the image I attached shows [EDIT] IMAGE REMOVED) - if this is an
> > old/retired issue, then ignore this.
> >
> > -J
>


The double-quote DOES seem to work in my case. Thanks for that!


> Message: 2
> Date: Wed, 29 May 2013 13:02:23 -0400
> From: "J. R. Carroll" <[email protected]>
> Subject: Re: [reportlab-users] Micr font advice in reportlab
> To: reportlab-users <[email protected]>
> Message-ID:
>         <
> CAPjhJmUCZzZ2HZONksiAxqbcgnn9CtiX5MYDS5+7b2j2UZ4g5w@mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>
> I forgot to add that the ttf font does have the semi-colon mapped as the
> funky-p shape, but the afm/pfb fonts do not (they are using the
> double-quote instead).  Perhaps thats the confusion between the font-spec
> provides versus the fonts you are trying to embed.
>
> -j
>
>
>
This is correct. I didn't quite follow how the font files worked, so thanks
for clarifying.





> Message: 3
> Date: Wed, 29 May 2013 10:45:34 -0700
> From: Tim Roberts <[email protected]>
> Subject: Re: [reportlab-users] Micr font advice in reportlab
> To: reportlab-users <[email protected]>
> Message-ID: <[email protected]>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1"
>
> Mike Driscoll wrote:
> >
> > The colons turn into the correct character, but the semi-colons end up
> > looking blank. I have attached a quick example code and its output.
> > You can see the colons have been transformed per the spec, but the
> > semi-colons are eaten. There's a demo version of the font that has
> > both the characters (I think), so if anyone has any ideas or
> > solutions, I'm all ears.
>
> Believe it or not, the problem is in the font files.  I had assumed you
> were using the TrueType file, and the TrueType file is correct.
> Instead, your code is using the Type 1 files (AFM/PFB).  If you go look
> at the human-readable version (of that the PFA), you'll see that the
> Type 1 font simply does not include the semi-colon.  (I checked the demo
> version, but I assume the real version is the same.)
>
> If you paid for this font (and I assume you did), that's a bug, and you
> should complain.  In the meantime, if you switch to the TrueType
> version, this problem will go away.
>
> --
> Tim Roberts, [email protected]
> Providenza & Boekelheide, Inc.
>
>

I think we have purchased it, so I'll ask that we report it as a bug. The
reason I'm not using the TrueType font though is that I get an error when I
try to. Instead of that mess of code in my original post, you can simplify
the font embedding down to the following:

micr_font = "MICRCheckPrixa.ttf"
pdfmetrics.registerFont(TTFont("MICRCheckPrixa", micr_font))

When I do that and run the example script, I get the following traceback:

IndexError: list index out of range
File "C:\Users\mdriscoll\Documents\projects\comp_sigma\font\micr_test.py",
line 21, in <module>
  doc.build(Story)
File "C:\Python26\Lib\site-packages\reportlab\platypus\doctemplate.py",
line 1117, in build
  BaseDocTemplate.build(self,flowables, canvasmaker=canvasmaker)
File "C:\Python26\Lib\site-packages\reportlab\platypus\doctemplate.py",
line 906, in build
  self._endBuild()
File "C:\Python26\Lib\site-packages\reportlab\platypus\doctemplate.py",
line 848, in _endBuild
  if getattr(self,'_doSave',1): self.canv.save()
File "C:\Python26\Lib\site-packages\reportlab\pdfgen\canvas.py", line 1123,
in save
  self._doc.SaveToFile(self._filename, self)
File "C:\Python26\Lib\site-packages\reportlab\pdfbase\pdfdoc.py", line 235,
in SaveToFile
  f.write(self.GetPDFData(canvas))
File "C:\Python26\Lib\site-packages\reportlab\pdfbase\pdfdoc.py", line 247,
in GetPDFData
  fnt.addObjects(self)
File "C:\Python26\Lib\site-packages\reportlab\pdfbase\ttfonts.py", line
1128, in addObjects
  pdfFont.FontDescriptor = self.face.addSubsetObjects(doc, baseFontName,
subset)
File "C:\Python26\Lib\site-packages\reportlab\pdfbase\ttfonts.py", line
926, in addSubsetObjects
  fontFile.content = self.makeSubset(subset)
File "C:\Python26\Lib\site-packages\reportlab\pdfbase\ttfonts.py", line
777, in makeSubset
  while n > 1 and self.hmetrics[n][0] == self.hmetrics[n - 1][0]:

I'm not sure what is going on here, but Reportlab sure doesn't like
something about that font.


-----------------
Mike Driscoll

Blog:   http://blog.pythonlibrary.org

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