RE: [docbook-apps] RE: XSL-FO and unicode

[<rob.cavicchio@emc.com>]

I understand your frustration. I happen to be dealing with a lot of these font/character issues myself right now, so my head's in it. Hopefully I can help further. The situation is very different for HTML vs. PDF.

As far as HTML goes, unless you are publishing HTML Help (CHM), I recommend sticking with UTF-8 for HTML output, and if possible make sure all your font style declarations end with one of the standard font keywords ("monospace", "sans-serif", or "serif"). When the HTML output is displayed, for each character the browser should automatically select an available font if the font you explicitly specified doesn't contain that character.


PDF has a much more limited fallback mechanism, and furthermore FOP itself does not even fully implement the XSL-FO 1.1 specification. As a result you have to jump through a lot more hoops to guarantee the correct display of all Unicode characters.


> When I look in the properties, only
> Helvetica font is used, not Symbol, which I indicate in the XSL-FO
> stylesheet with
> <xsl:param name="symbol.font.family" select="'Symbol'"/>
> <xsl:param name="body.font.family" select="'Helvetica,Arial,Serif'"/>

Unfortunately I think you are running into a limitation of FOP that the DocBook stylesheets don't seem set up to let you circumvent. I went and looked at the DocBook stylesheet reference at http://docbook.sourceforge.net/release/xsl/current/doc/index.html (sorry I didn't do this before), and according to the documentation, the symbol font names "are automatically appended to the body or title font family name when fonts are specified in a font-family property in the FO output". But as we've said, FOP disregards all but the first font name, so appending more font names to the end of the list is not going to have any effect.


> As of inserting Arial Unicode in FOP, I hesitate, as the ttf file is 22Mb
> in size...

I believe that FOP subsets all fonts, so you probably don't have to worry about the size. The font does only come with MS Office, but if you know that all systems you publish on will have MS Office installed, then the simplest solution is probably this:

<xsl:param name="body.font.family" select="'Arial Unicode MS,Helvetica,Arial,Serif'"/>


You might then run into a further limitation, however. My understanding is that "Arial Unicode MS" does not have bold and italic variations, so if you do this you might find that bold and italics do not show up in the PDF. I have not yet experimented to see what really happens here.



> -----Original Message-----
> From: Fabien Tillier [mailto:f.tillier@cerep.fr]
> Sent: Thursday, July 08, 2010 4:46 AM
> To: Cavicchio, Rob; docbook-apps@lists.oasis-open.org
> Subject: RE: [docbook-apps] RE: XSL-FO and unicode
> 
> Thanks rob.
> I still do have some troubles....
> I am using the same docbook xml to generate either HTML or PDF. Some
> characters (µ, °) are visible in PDF but not in HTML while others (alpha,
> beta) are visible in HTML but not in PDF....
> I am getting mad, as both are encoded the same way in the original XML...
> Maybe it is because I am using ISO-8859-1 ?
> If I try with UTF-8, I get correct display in HTML but the problem is
> still there in FOP(huh, PDF). When I look in the properties, only
> Helvetica font is used, not Symbol, which I indicate in the XSL-FO
> stylesheet with
> <xsl:param name="symbol.font.family" select="'Symbol'"/>
> <xsl:param name="body.font.family" select="'Helvetica,Arial,Serif'"/>
> I have that strange feeling I am running in circles...
> As of inserting Arial Unicode in FOP, I hesitate, as the ttf file is 22Mb
> in size...
> 
> Regards,
> Fabien
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -----Message d'origine-----
> De : rob.cavicchio@emc.com [mailto:rob.cavicchio@emc.com]
> Envoyé : mercredi 7 juillet 2010 18:57
> À : docbook-apps@lists.oasis-open.org
> Objet : [docbook-apps] RE: XSL-FO and unicode
> 
> Fabien Tillier [mailto:f.tillier@cerep.fr] wrote:
> 
> > In the xsl-fo, I get
> > <fo:block>&#945;</fo:block>
> >
> > And in PDF, a wonderful "#"
> > So, after some further readings, I found that I had to add some fonts,
> > so in the XSL Customization, I added
> >
> > <xsl:param name="symbol.font.family" select="'Arial Sans
> > Unicode,Symbol,ZapfDingbats'"/>
> >
> > But that does not change a thing.... though in the fo, I have <fo:root
> > xmlns:fo="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Format"; font-family="serif,Arial
> > Sans Unicode,Symbol,ZapfDingbats" font-size="10pt" text-align="justify"
> > line-height="normal" font-selection-strategy="character-by-character"
> > line-height-shift-adjustment="disregard-shifts" writing-mode="lr-tb"
> > language="en">
> 
> 
> I don't know what OS you're working in, but I don't recognize the font
> name "Arial Sans Unicode". Do you mean "Arial Unicode MS"? The most
> current version of that font is available on Windows systems that have
> Office 2003 or later installed, and it does contain the character you
> specified, which is U+03B1 ("Greek Small Letter Alpha").
> 
> The "Symbol" font also contains this character, and I recommend using that
> instead because it is one of the Base 14 fonts that will always be
> available in PDF. I think you'll find that if you put "Symbol" first in
> your font list, it will work. As Mauritz pointed out, FOP does not handle
> alternate font selections, so it will only use the first font you specify
> ("Arial Sans Unicode" in your list). If the glyph doesn't exist in that
> font or in the default fallback font (which I think is always "Times"),
> you'll get a "missing glyph" symbol.
> 
> If you do want to load OS fonts such as "Arial Unicode MS", in addition to
> specifying the font name in the FO, you need to create a FOP configuration
> file and add the <auto-detect /> instruction, as documented here:
> http://xmlgraphics.apache.org/fop/0.95/fonts.html#basics
> 
> 
> *************************
> Rob Cavicchio
> Principal Technical Writer & Information Architect
> EMC Captiva
> Information Intelligence Group
> EMC Corporation
> 3721 Valley Centre Drive, Ste 200
> San Diego, CA 92130
> 
> P: (858) 320-1208
> F: (858) 320-1010
> E: rob.cavicchio@emc.com
> 
> The opinions expressed here are my personal opinions. Content published
> here is not read or approved in advance by EMC and does not necessarily
> reflect the views and opinions of EMC.
> 
> 
> 
> 
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