Report Generator - Administration Guide : Fonts

04 April 2016

1. Fonts

When creating PDF reports that contains for example Asian characters you might need to configure the Apache FOP system to find proper fonts that contains glyphs for those characters.

As mentioned in earlier chapter, the report generator contains two different version of Apache FOP: 0.20.5 and 1.0. The font handling in the latter version has been improved a lot compared to earlier versions. This version should preferably be used.

The sub chapters below contain information how to define custom fonts for the different FOP versions.

In your stylesheet, you need to refer to the fonts that contain the proper glyphs.

Example:

<xsl:attribute-set name="tableCell">
    <xsl:attribute name="font-family">MSMincho</xsl:attribute> (1)
    ...
</xsl:attribute-set>

...

<fo:table-cell xsl:use-attribute-sets="tableCell"> (2)
    <fo:block>
        ...
    </fo:block>
</fo:table-cell>
1 Defines the font
2 Use attribute set

1.1. FOP 0.20.5

Create a file called FOPConfig-0.20.5.xml within the folder:

/WEB-INF/classes/com/technia/tvc/reportgenerator/fop

To register custom fonts, add them into the file created according to the example below:

<configuration>
    <fonts>
     <!-- example -->
     <!--
     <font metrics-file="arial.xml" kerning="yes" embed-file="arial.ttf">
        <font-triplet name="Arial" style="normal" weight="normal"/>
        <font-triplet name="ArialMT" style="normal" weight="normal"/>
     </font>
     <font metrics-file="arialb.xml" kerning="yes" embed-file="arialb.ttf">
        <font-triplet name="Arial" style="normal" weight="bold"/>
        <font-triplet name="ArialMT" style="normal" weight="bold"/>
     </font>
     <font metrics-file="ariali.xml" kerning="yes" embed-file="ariali.ttf">
        <font-triplet name="Arial" style="italic" weight="normal"/>
        <font-triplet name="ArialMT" style="italic" weight="normal"/>
     </font>
     <font metrics-file="arialbi.xml" kerning="yes" embed-file="arialbi.ttf">
        <font-triplet name="Arial" style="italic" weight="bold"/>
        <font-triplet name="ArialMT" style="italic" weight="bold"/>
     </font>
     -->
     <!-- Example Japanese fonts
     <font metrics-file="msgothic.xml" embed-file="D:\winnt\font\msgothic.ttc" kerning="yes">
        <font-triplet name="Gothic" style="normal" weight="normal"/>
        <font-triplet name="Gothic" style="normal" weight="bold"/>
        <font-triplet name="Gothic" style="italic" weight="normal"/>
        <font-triplet name="Gothic" style="italic" weight="bold"/>
     </font>
     <font metrics-file="msmincho.xml" embed-file="Cyberbit.ttf" kerning="yes">
        <font-triplet name="Mincho" style="normal" weight="normal"/>
        <font-triplet name="Mincho" style="normal" weight="bold"/>
        <font-triplet name="Mincho" style="italic" weight="normal"/>
        <font-triplet name="Mincho" style="italic" weight="bold"/>
       </font>
      -->
    </fonts>
</configuration>

  1. The metrics-file must be created from the TTF file using the below command: (example below)

    java -cp tvc-reportgenerator-x.y.z.jar com.technia.tvc.fop0205.fonts.apps.TTFReader [options] C:\myfonts\cmr10.ttf ttfcm.xml

    Where the [options] are described in the table below:

    Option Description

    -fn <fontname>

    By default, FOP uses the fontname from the .pfm file when embedding the font. Use the "-fn" option to override this name with one you have chosen. This may be useful in some cases to ensure that applications using the output document (Acrobat Reader for example) use the embedded font instead of a local font with the same name.

    -ttcname <fontname>

    If you’re reading data from a TrueType Collection (.ttc file) you must specify which font from the collection you will read metrics from. If you read from a .ttc file without this option, the fontnames will be listed for you.

    -enc ansi

    Creates a WinAnsi-encoded font metrics file. Without this option, a CID-keyed font metrics file is created. The table below summarizes the differences between these two encoding options as currently used within FOP. Please note that this information only applies to TrueType fonts and TrueType collections:

  2. The metrics files are located relative to the root of the application.

  3. Some additional info on this topic can be read from this resource:

    http://www.firebirdsql.org/manual/fontembed-fop-userconfig.html

1.2. FOP 1.0+

As of FOP 1.0, the fonts available in the operating system on the server where the report generator is running will be registered automatically.

If you need to register a new font, do as described below:

  1. Create a file called FOPConfig.xml within the folder:

    /WEB-INF/classes/com/technia/tvc/reportgenerator/fop

  2. The default file that is part of the envoiareportgenerator.jar looks like below:

    <fop version="1.0">
    <strict-configuration>false</strict-configuration>
    <strict-validation>false</strict-validation>
    <source-resolution>72</source-resolution>
    <target-resolution>72</target-resolution>
    <use-cache>true</use-cache>
    <renderers>
        <renderer mime="application/pdf">
            <fonts>
                <auto-detect/>
            </fonts>
        </renderer>
    </renderers>
</fop>

    Modify this file according to the descriptions found at this URL:

    http://xmlgraphics.apache.org/fop/1.0/fonts.html