Hello All,Please let me know what I'm doing wrong here! I have trouble with generating a PDF document from ColdFusion.The cfm document contains mixed English and Arabic text and it seems that the ColdFusion's embedded PDF Generator drops Arabic characters when creating the PDF file.I attached a bare bone cfm document (see print_test.cfm) that I used as an example to the stated problem. The document: displays fine in FireFox 3.0.10 (see attached print_test_screenshot.jpg) Used link: http://localhost:8500/Print_test.cfm?display=yesThis image file also shows the characters that get dropped by the ColdFusion's embedded PDF Generator. is converted fine in PDF by the FireFox 3.0.10 using print command line (see attached print_test_firefox.pdf) Used command:“C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" -print "http://localhost:8500/Print_test.cfm?display=yes" -printmode pdf -printfile "c:\pdf\print_test_firefox.pdf" -printdelay 150is NOT converted to PDF properly by the ColdFusion using the embedded PDF generator (see attached print_test_cf.pdf) Used command: http://localhost:8500/Print_test.cfmThe print_test.cfm file, which I had to remove since this forum allows me to post only 3 attachments, has the following content:<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"><html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><cfsavecontent variable="MyPage"><head><title>PRINT TEST</title></head><body><table width="810" border="0"> <tr> <td width="225" ><div align="center"><strong>ARABIC TEXT PRINT TEST</strong></div></td> <td width="225" ><div align="center"><strong><span dir="rtl">نظام بصمة الوجه في دولة</span></strong></div></td> </tr></table></body></html></cfsavecontent><cfif not(isdefined("url.DISPLAY"))> <cfdocument format="pdf" filename="c:\pdf\print_test_cf.pdf" overwrite="yes"> <cfoutput>#mypage#</cfoutput> </cfdocument> <cfelse> <cfoutput>#mypage#</cfoutput> </cfif>Thank you all for your help,Adrian

Participant

Question

ColdFusion 8 drops Arabic characters when generating PDF doc

Forum|Forum|17 years ago
May 25, 2009
4 replies
4743 views

Hello All,

Please let me know what I'm doing wrong here! I have trouble with generating a PDF document from ColdFusion.

The cfm document contains mixed English and Arabic text and it seems that the ColdFusion's embedded PDF Generator drops Arabic characters when creating the PDF file.

I attached a bare bone cfm document (see print_test.cfm) that I used as an example to the stated problem.

The document:

displays fine in FireFox 3.0.10 (see attached print_test_screenshot.jpg) Used link:
- http://localhost:8500/Print_test.cfm?display=yes
- This image file also shows the characters that get dropped by the ColdFusion's embedded PDF Generator.
is converted fine in PDF by the FireFox 3.0.10 using print command line (see attached print_test_firefox.pdf) Used command:
- “C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" -print "http://localhost:8500/Print_test.cfm?display=yes" -printmode pdf -printfile "c:\pdf\print_test_firefox.pdf" -printdelay 150
is NOT converted to PDF properly by the ColdFusion using the embedded PDF generator (see attached print_test_cf.pdf) Used command:
- http://localhost:8500/Print_test.cfm

The print_test.cfm file, which I had to remove since this forum allows me to post only 3 attachments, has the following content:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

<head>
<title>PRINT TEST</title>
</head>

<body>
<table width="810" border="0">
<tr>
<td width="225" ><div align="center"><strong>ARABIC TEXT PRINT TEST</strong></div></td>
<td width="225" ><div align="center"><strong><span dir="rtl">نظام بصمة الوجه في دولة</span></strong></div></td>
</tr>
</table>
</body>
</html>
</cfsavecontent>

<cfif not(isdefined("url.DISPLAY"))>
        <cfdocument format="pdf" filename="c:\pdf\print_test_cf.pdf" overwrite="yes">
        <cfoutput>#mypage#</cfoutput>

        </cfdocument>
    <cfelse>

    <cfoutput>#mypage#</cfoutput>

</cfif>

Thank you all for your help,

Adrian

print_test_cf.pdf

print_test_firefox.pdf

This topic has been closed for replies.

K

kevin_roche

Participating Frequently

Is anyone aware if this is fixed in CF9?

A

Adam Cameron.

Inspiring

Somewhat curiously, the attached code (print_test.cfm.txt (the second, 1.1 K version) works fine for me in both CF8 and CF9. I cannot read Arabic, but certainly the resultant PDFs have what looks to be valid Arabic text (no weird icons, question marks or boxes) in them.

I was a bit surprised that Paul didn't mention "you probably should have a <cfprocessingdirective> tag in your CFM file if it's going to include non-ASCII characters". That's my usual source of grief with this sort of thing (my exposure to this sort of problem was with Cyrillic, not Arabic though). Perhaps CF8 & CF9 have got better at detecting UTF-8 files without the need for hard-coded prompting.

--

Adam

K

kevin_roche

Participating Frequently

Adam,

Thanks for pointing the <cfprocessingdirective> tag out. I am just working on my first Arabic web site and that was the first gocha I found.

I havn't actually tried generating PDFs yet but its on the list and I am hoping it doesn't give me any grief.

Kevin

T

tooMuchTrouble

Inspiring

is it the letter "feh" (U+0641)?

A

adrain68Author

Participant

Paul,

1. Here there are the details you asked me for:

Version Information

Server Details
Server Product	ColdFusion
Version	8,0,1,195765
Edition	Enterprise (Trial)
Serial Number
Operating System	Windows XP
OS Version	5.1
Adobe Driver Version	3.6 (Build 0027)

2. I updated cfm file attached containing the Unicode characters. The missing chars are U+0641 and U+064A.

3. The two unicodes do form a ligature.

4. I suppose that the system default font has that character since it is displayed fine in the both the browser and Notepad. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

5. Also the character displays fine in VB6 with Chilkat CharSet using any of the default Traditional Arabic, Arabic Simplified, Simplified Arabic Fixed, or Andalus fonts.

6. These four fonts are also present in the ColdFusion's Font Management: Current System Fonts. I tried explicitly to invoke them in the cfm document but nothing changed.

Please let me know if the attached print_test.cfm generate properly (no missing glyphs) the output file C:\PDF\print_test_cf.pdf on your machine.

Thank you,

Adrian

print_test-cfm.txt

T

tooMuchTrouble

Inspiring

...swell quoted email text still doesn't work.

drain68 wrote:

> 2. I updated cfm file attached containing the Unicode characters. The missing
> chars are U+0641 and U+064A.

ok.

> 3. The two unicodes do form a ligature.


ok. i thought it would be these.

> 4. I suppose that the system default font has that character since it is
> displayed fine in the both the browser and Notepad. Please correct me if I'm
> wrong.


the PDF is generated server side, so the fonts have to be on the server (though 
i guess in your case client/server are the same) but different apps might use 
different default fonts.

> 5. Also the character displays fine in VB6 with Chilkat CharSet using any of
> the default Traditional Arabic, Arabic Simplified, Simplified Arabic Fixed,
> or Andalus fonts.


and that does PDF generation?

> 6. These four fonts are also present in the ColdFusion's Font Management:
> Current System Fonts. I tried explicitly to invoke them in the cfm document
> but nothing changed.


yes i tried with ms arial unicode (i would recommend that font to you if you do 
a lot of i18n work) that char wasn't present in the output.

> Please let me know if the attached print_test.cfm generate properly (no
> missing glyphs) the output file C:\PDF\print_test_cf.pdf on your machine.


nope, i got the same thing w/your code.

let me run this "directly" thru iText before we call "bug" in cf.

Message was edited by: PaulH

T

tooMuchTrouble

Inspiring

probably a good idea to tell us exactly what char is missing (at least it's

unicode codepoint value). is it a ligature? does the system default font have

that char? have you tried other fonts? what version of cf? hotfixes, etc. applied?

A

adrain68Author

Participant

Hello All,

Attached you have the missing file print_test.cfm

Adrian

print_test-cfm.txt

readme.txt

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