Re: Using Symbola or equivalent Unicode6 font with Reportlab

Hi Robin,
Thanks a lot for your reply!

On Fri, Feb 21, 2014 at 12:27 PM, Robin Becker <[email protected]> wrote:

> Hi Mathieu,
>
>
> On 20/02/2014 17:09, Mathieu Comandon wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> I'm trying to generate a set of "superfonts" based on Symbola.ttf (
>> http://users.teilar.gr/~g1951d/ ). The plan is to merge the regular fonts
>> we use in our application with Symbola.ttf in order to allow printing
>> almost any possible glyph.
>>
>>  I have looked for such a font without success.
>
> I have tried some things with FontForge, it's quite easy to merge several
fonts together and to convert them into various formats.

 I tried generating a PDF from sources containing Unicode6 characters or
> non-latin alphabets (Japanese, Chinese, Arabic, Hebrew). Neither the
> composite Times + Symbola I created on FontForge nor the plain Symbola
> displayed the non Latin characters.
>
>  It's not clear exactly how you are doing the conversion. Are you creating
> a combined TTF? I have used MS Mincho & MS Gothic on windows and they are
> certainly able to display both latin & CJK / Arabic / etc etc. However, I'm
> not sure what parts of unicode you're referring to when you mention unicode
> 6.
>
> As I understand it there are some issues in python 2.x unicode related to
> going outside the standard plane, but I'm not sure if that's what you mean.
>
> When I'm mentioning Unicode 6 characters, I'm mainly refering to "emojis"
(example: http://strycore.com/unicode6 ). For example, in our product we
generate PDF documents from Instagram feeds and Instagram users tend to use
those.
Having the Unicode 6 is not really a huge requirement, if i manage to get
alternative alphabets printed correctly, that will be a huge improvement !

I tried running your code snippet using the ms-mincho fonts (but running on
Linux) and I got the following error:

    raise RenderPMError("Can't setFont(%s) missing the T1
files?\nOriginally %s: %s" % (fontName,s1,s2))
    reportlab.graphics.renderPM.RenderPMError: Can't setFont(ms-mincho)
missing the T1 files?
    Originally <type 'exceptions.AttributeError'>: TTEncoding instance has
no attribute 'vector'

I will try debugging this and using other fonts on monday. Also, we are
using Platypus flowables to generate the contents, I hope it doesn't affect
the font rendering, I'll try converting your snippet using Platypus.