PDF, advanced glyp handling: Khmer Unicode (Hanuman Font) Not Rendering Correctly

[speckyspooky]

Discussed in #2040

^{Originally posted by sinsarath February 3, 2025}
Hello everyone,

I'm using Eclipse BIRT Report Designer on macOS to generate reports in PDF format, but I’m facing issues with rendering Khmer Unicode (Hanuman Font). The Khmer characters either:

• Appear as blank or missing text, or
• Show incorrect khmer characters.

What I’ve Tried:

1. Installed Khmer Hanuman Font on macOS and confirmed it works in other applications.
2. Set Khmer Hanuman Font in BIRT: In the report design, I applied Hanuman under Font properties of text elements.
3. Modified fontsConfig.xml:

• Located the file in my BIRT runtime folder and added:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<font>
	<font-aliases>
		<mapping name="serif" font-family="Times-Roman" />
		<mapping name="sans-serif" font-family="Helvetica" />
		<mapping name="monospace" font-family="Courier" />
		<mapping name="cursive" font-family="Times-Roman" />
		<mapping name="fantasy" font-family="Times-Roman" />
	</font-aliases>

	<search-sequences>
		<sequence locale="zh_CN">
			<catalog name="Western" />
			<catalog name="Chinese_S" />
			<catalog name="Chinese_T" />
			<catalog name="Chinese" />
			<catalog name="Japanese" />
			<catalog name="Korean" />
		</sequence>
		<sequence locale="zh">
			<catalog name="Western" />
			<catalog name="Chinese_T" />
			<catalog name="Chinese_S" />
			<catalog name="Chinese" />
			<catalog name="Japanese" />
			<catalog name="Korean" />
		</sequence>
		<sequence locale="ja">
			<catalog name="Western" />
			<catalog name="Japanese" />
			<catalog name="Chinese" />
			<catalog name="Korean" />
		</sequence>
		<sequence locale="ko">
			<catalog name="Western" />
			<catalog name="Korean" />
			<catalog name="Chinese" />
			<catalog name="Japanese" />
		</sequence>
	</search-sequences>

	<composite-font name="all-fonts" font-family="Times-Roman">
	</composite-font>

	<font-paths>
		<path path="C:/windows/fonts" />
		<path path="d:/windows/fonts" />
		<path path="e:/windows/fonts" />
		<path path="f:/windows/fonts" />
		<path path="g:/windows/fonts" />
		<path path="C:/WINNT/fonts" />
		<path path="d:/WINNT/fonts" />
		<path path="e:/WINNT/fonts" />
		<path path="f:/WINNT/fonts" />
		<path path="g:/WINNT/fonts" />
		<path path="/usr/X/lib/X11/fonts/TrueType" />
		<path path="/usr/share/fonts/default/TrueType" />
		<path path="/usr/openwin/lib/X11/fonts/TrueType" />
		<path path="/usr/openwin/lib/locale/euro_fonts/X11/fonts/TrueType" />
		<path path="/usr/openwin/lib/locale/iso_8859_2/X11/fonts/TrueType" />
		<path path="/usr/openwin/lib/locale/iso_8859_5/X11/fonts/TrueType" />
		<path path="/usr/openwin/lib/locale/iso_8859_7/X11/fonts/TrueType" />
		<path path="/usr/openwin/lib/locale/iso_8859_8/X11/fonts/TrueType" />
		<path path="/usr/openwin/lib/locale/iso_8859_9/X11/fonts/TrueType" />
		<path path="/usr/openwin/lib/locale/iso_8859_13/X11/fonts/TrueType" />
		<path path="/usr/openwin/lib/locale/iso_8859_15/X11/fonts/TrueType" />
		<path path="/usr/openwin/lib/locale/ar/X11/fonts/TrueType" />
		<path path="/usr/openwin/lib/locale/hi_IN.UTF-8/X11/fonts/TrueType" />
		<path path="/usr/openwin/lib/locale/ja/X11/fonts/TT" />
		<path path="/usr/openwin/lib/locale/ko/X11/fonts/TrueType" />
		<path path="/usr/openwin/lib/locale/ko.UTF-8/X11/fonts/TrueType" />
		<path path="/usr/openwin/lib/locale/KOI8-R/X11/fonts/TrueType" />
		<path path="/usr/openwin/lib/locale/ru.ansi-1251/X11/fonts/TrueType" />
		<path path="/usr/openwin/lib/locale/th_TH/X11/fonts/TrueType" />
		<path path="/usr/openwin/lib/locale/zh_TW/X11/fonts/TrueType" />
		<path path="/usr/openwin/lib/locale/zh_TW.BIG5/X11/fonts/TT" />
		<path path="/usr/openwin/lib/locale/zh_HK.BIG5HK/X11/fonts/TT" />
		<path path="/usr/openwin/lib/locale/zh_CN.GB18030/X11/fonts/TrueType" />
		<path path="/usr/openwin/lib/locale/zh/X11/fonts/TrueType" />
		<path path="/usr/openwin/lib/locale/zh.GBK/X11/fonts/TrueType" />
		<path path="/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/TrueType" />
		<path path="/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/truetype" />
		<path path="/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/tt" />
		<path path="/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/TTF" />
		<path path="/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/OTF" />
		<path path="/usr/share/fonts/ja/TrueType" />
		<path path="/usr/share/fonts/truetype" />
		<path path="/usr/share/fonts/ko/TrueType" />
		<path path="/usr/share/fonts/zh_CN/TrueType" />
		<path path="/usr/share/fonts/zh_TW/TrueType" />
		<path path="/var/lib/defoma/x-ttcidfont-conf.d/dirs/TrueType" />
		<path path="/usr/share/fonts/TTF" />
		<path path="/usr/share/fonts/OTF" />
                <path path="/Applications/Eclipse.app/Contents/Eclipse/plugins/org.eclipse.birt.report.engine.fonts_4.18.0.v202409161007/Fonts" />
	</font-paths>
</font>

• Restarted Eclipse after making the changes.

4. Checked PDF Output Encoding:

• Tried setting UTF-8 encoding in BIRT preferences.
• But I don’t see the "Embed Fonts" option in the Eclipse UI.

5. Database Encoding: My database (SQL Server) is set to UTF-8 to support Khmer characters.

Questions:

1. How can I properly embed Khmer Unicode fonts (Hanuman) in BIRT PDF output on macOS?
2. Why is the "Embed Fonts" option missing in Eclipse BIRT Report Designer?
3. Is there a better PDF Emitter for BIRT that supports Khmer Unicode?
4. Are there any macOS-specific configurations needed for font embedding in BIRT?

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

[speckyspooky]

I have started a deep debugging session based of the hint LibrePDF/OpenPDF#1264

The advanced glyph handling wasn't supported till now through the BIRT font handling which is based on openPDF.
I will create an enhancement to support the advanced glyph handling.

[speckyspooky]

Example of the enabled advanced glyph handling for PDF produced through BIRT with openPDF:

PDF example according to the screen: khmertext.pdf

[sinsarath]

Great to hear that,
when it official release ? and will support all khmer font ?

[speckyspooky]

The change will be part of BIRT 4.19 (if I got the quality approval of it).
Release day is planned March 12, 2025.

I cannot say if all khmer fonts will be supported, the documentation means only that the adanvced glyph handling will be activated with the global setting. But I cannot say if the support for all fonts is given.

glyph handling: https://github.com/LibrePDF/OpenPDF/wiki/Accents,-DIN-91379,-non-Latin-scripts

[speckyspooky]

@sinsarath
Short update, the special font handling for your Khmer-font is disabled by default with BIRT 4.19.
I added a configuration that you can enable the special handling. The configuration will be done at file fontsConfig*.xml - see screen.

Please be aware it was working with your font on my side.
But please test it extensively on your side with your reports because I didn't know if there some side effects.

[merks]

The 4.19 release is next week so test it quickly.

https://download.eclipse.org/birt/updates/