Character coding when exporting to PDF

[matoats]

Hello!

I've got an issue when exporting Teaching Assignments to PDF. It seems only latin characters are exported correctly. If the Instructor's name is in Cyrillic, it shows correctly on the web page, but it's blank in an exported PDF. Can I change any parameter to work around?

Thank you.

[tomas-muller]

This is because there are no cyrillic letters in the default font that the library we use to create PDFs (iText). This can be changed by providing a font that has the required alphabet using the following custom properties (the example is from Czech, where the accented characters are also not included in the default font -- but it should work for other languages as well, if the fonts mentioned contain the cyrillic letters as well):

# For various PDF exports, if you need other fonts than the ones bundled in the iText library
# (e.g., because of their poor unicode support), 
# set the following unitime.pdf.font properties. The fonts will be embedded in the exported PDF.
#
# Here are some tested examples (please check that you have the fonts installed before uncommenting of the appropriate section):

# Windows 7 Arial and Courier Fonts
#unitime.pdf.font=c:\\Windows\\Fonts\\arial.ttf
#unitime.pdf.font.italic=c:\\Windows\\Fonts\\ariali.ttf
#unitime.pdf.font.bold=c:\\Windows\\Fonts\\arialbd.ttf
#unitime.pdf.font.bolditalic=c:\\Windows\\Fonts\\arialbi.ttf
#unitime.pdf.font.fixed=c:\\Windows\\Fonts\\cour.ttf

# Mac OS X Arial and Courier New Fonts
#unitime.pdf.font=/Library/Fonts/Arial.ttf
#unitime.pdf.font.italic=/Library/Fonts/Arial Italic.ttf
#unitime.pdf.font.bold=/Library/Fonts/Arial Bold.ttf
#unitime.pdf.font.bolditalic=/Library/Fonts/Arial Bold Italic.ttf
#unitime.pdf.font.fixed=/Library/Fonts/Courier New.ttf

# Linux DejaVu Fonts (see https://dejavu-fonts.github.io/)
#unitime.pdf.font=/usr/share/fonts/truetype/ttf-dejavu/DejaVuSans.ttf
#unitime.pdf.font.bold=/usr/share/fonts/truetype/ttf-dejavu/DejaVuSans-Bold.ttf
#unitime.pdf.font.bolditalic=/usr/share/fonts/truetype/ttf-dejavu/DejaVuSans-BoldOblique.ttf
#unitime.pdf.font.italic=/usr/share/fonts/truetype/ttf-dejavu/DejaVuSans-Oblique.ttf
#unitime.pdf.font.fixed=/usr/share/fonts/truetype/ttf-dejavu/DejaVuSansMono.ttf
#unitime.pdf.fontsize.small=8
#unitime.pdf.fontsize.normal=10
#unitime.pdf.fontsize.fixed=8

# Linux Bitstream Vera Fonts (https://www.fontspace.com/bitstream)
#unitime.pdf.font=/usr/share/fonts/truetype/ttf-bitstream-vera/Vera.ttf
#unitime.pdf.font.bold=/usr/share/fonts/truetype/ttf-bitstream-vera/VeraBd.ttf
#unitime.pdf.font.bolditalic=/usr/share/fonts/truetype/ttf-bitstream-vera/VeraBI.ttf
#unitime.pdf.font.italic=/usr/share/fonts/truetype/ttf-bitstream-vera/VeraIt.ttf
#unitime.pdf.font.fixed=/usr/share/fonts/truetype/ttf-bitstream-vera/VeraMono.ttf
#unitime.pdf.fontsize.small=8
#unitime.pdf.fontsize.normal=10
#unitime.pdf.fontsize.fixed=8

These properties can be set using the custom properties file (see here) or in the application using Administration > Defaults > Configuration page.