RUSSIAN_CHARSET

Why when I add TrueType font with RUSSIAN_CHARSET to pdf file I can draw ENGLISH AND RUSSIAN chars?

RUSSIAN_CHARSET - it's 255 chars [0x0400 - 0x4FF] or not?

Please help me to understand charsets!

Hi Alex,

charsets are translationtables. With charsets you may switch between groups of 256 glyphs. It was the first answer to allow languages with other glyphs as in english. The same code denotes in different charsets a different glyph.

The next bigger step to be open for much more is unicode. To understand the concepts look into wikipedia. It is not a real (Quick)PDF-problem.

Here a bad example:

  QP.SetOrigin(0);                 // Bottomleft
  QP.SetMeasurementUnits(1);       // Millimeter
// establish fonts only 1x per PDF
  sid := QP.AddStandardFont(4);    // Helvetica for english
  cid := QP.AddTrueTypeFont('Czar{1251}', 0); // and for russian

// output text with correct font
  QP.SelectFont(sid);
  QP.DrawText(25, 260, 'russian has own letters:');

  QP.SelectFont(cid); // now change font to a russian
  QP.DrawText(100, 260, #$50#$72#$70#$70#$69#$68#$68);

  QP.SelectFont(sid); // switch back
  QP.DrawText(25, 250, 'and back to english');

The PDF looks not so nice, because of wrong letterspace. And in this font is (for example) no i-kratkoje (short i). Here is much more to do, it shows only a principle way.  You have a lot to try to get the feeling for this.

More usefull is to read over unicode and to use a unicode-font. It makes the PDF (if embedded) bigger, but is much more powerfull. So you dont need to switch between font depending on charset. There are some posts for this.


Werner


Edited by edvoigt - 06 Jun 12 at 9:57AM

Hi Autodidact,


in the moment I'm very short of time. I have something to produce and I'm so fare from the goal.

My first intention goes in the direction, that your font is unable for russian. Is it really the same, as for the russian readable like "podkladka" (looks nice in latin letters), which you use for the inputvalue after this?
Maybe you have to switch between differents fonts/charsets depending from your text.

Maybe too, that I'm here on a very wrong way...

Cheers,

Werner

Hi Haakon,

here a dirty working entry with Calibri-Font, using unicode.

It is made by Delphi 7 under XP.

  sid, cid: integer;
  Chars: widestring; // for the chars we need in Calibri
  k: integer;
  p: double; // position, because of of Charwidth-problem
begin
  QP := TQuickPDF.Create;
  QP.UnlockKey({$I PDFkey.inc});
  QP.SetOrigin(0);                 // Bottomleft
  QP.SetMeasurementUnits(1);       // Millimeter
  sid := QP.AddStandardFont(4);    // Helvetica for english

//  build a string with all needed chars 
  for k:=$0400 to $0420 do Chars := Chars+wideChar(k); // only a first part
  cid := QP.AddTrueTypeSubsettedFont('Calibri', Chars, 0); // and for russian

// output text with correct font
  QP.SelectFont(sid);
  QP.DrawText(25, 260, 'russian has own letters:');
  QP.SelectFont(cid); // now change font to a russian
  p := 0;
  for k:=1 to Length(Chars)
  do begin
    QP.DrawText(80+p, 260, Chars[k]);
    p := p+ 3; // CharWidth or TextWidth return 0 - why, unknown
  end;

//  QP.DrawText(80, 260, Chars); dont work, puts all on the same position

  QP.SelectFont(sid); // switch back
  QP.DrawText(25, 250, 'and back to english');

It works, but there is something wrong. With Drawtext all glyphs go one above the other on the same position. So I used the fixed value of 3 only for this demonstration.

So you get the right glyphs, but you have something to do for better quality.


Cheers,
Werner



Edited by edvoigt - 06 Jun 12 at 9:59AM

Hi Haakon,

now you understand, that I'm not too proud about my help. Because I'm unable to get a Charwidthinfo for Calibri.

The value 3 mm in my loop over the string is only to show, that it works with russian output. Maybe you can get for a given fontsize (as big as possible for quality) from any other program for every glyph its width, you would have a foot in the door. This solution would be without kerning, but better than nothing.

On http://www.microsoft.com/typography/FreeToolsOverview.mspx you find a lot of information, but I think it's not your intent to learn all about font-inside.

Maybe there is something to do for the QPL-developers, because I have seen, that older TTF-Tools dont like Calibri.TTF.

Cheers,

Werner

I appreciate you taking the time never the less. Sometimes the treasure is not a solution but that someone spends their time to try helping out. 

... and would require 1251 encoded strings to be passed to DrawText.

Interesting detail. I wonder what that dictates in Classic ASP. One should think; nothing, as the same variable data is passed to the browser correctly ...