Unicode Ballot Boxes and PDF Creation

[MikeH]

Hello,

I'm working on converting a .docx document to a .pdf document. The docx will have checkboxes (not necessarily controls) that I need to convert.

Currently I have a form that merges XML data to create a final form. The XML data determines whether a checkbox is checked or not. For my first try, I returned an 'X' or an 'O' to my binding. This has worked well.

I next tried to use Wingdings2 to return something that actually looks like a checkbox. I have another post about that on the forums, and it is being looked into.

Looking on the forums, I saw a post that suggested using unicode characters. ( docx-java-f6/bind-checkbox-in-docx-t1847.html ) So, I tried returning unicode characters into my bindings (☐,☑ and ☒), which worked fine for creating a .docx. I used the Arial Unicode MS font to display the unicode characters (however, they also displayed in calibri).

So, I made a little .docx that contained the three unicode ballot boxes (empty, checked, x'ed) and wrote a couple of small programs to convert the docx to pdf. I used PhysicalFonts.setRegex(regex) to set my list of appropriate fonts (including ARIALUNI to cover the use of Arial Unicode MS) and also used

PhysicalFont font
= PhysicalFonts.getPhysicalFonts().get("Arial Unicode MS");
// make sure this is in your regex (if any)!!!
if (font!=null) {
fontMapper.getFontMappings().put("Helvetica", font);
}
wordMLPackage.setFontMapper(fontMapper);

to make sure Helvetica was being converted to Arial Unicode, as I saw messages when I ran my programs that said my unicode characters were somehow using Helvetica:

Jul 9, 2014 7:31:36 AM org.apache.fop.events.LoggingEventListener processEvent
WARNING: Glyph "?" (0x2610) not available in font "Helvetica".
Jul 9, 2014 7:31:36 AM org.apache.fop.events.LoggingEventListener processEvent
WARNING: Glyph "?" (0x2611) not available in font "Helvetica".
Jul 9, 2014 7:31:36 AM org.apache.fop.events.LoggingEventListener processEvent
WARNING: Glyph "?" (0x2612) not available in font "Helvetica".
Jul 9, 2014 7:31:36 AM org.apache.fop.events.LoggingEventListener processEvent


I've used both XSLFO and Docx4j.toFO to convert from docx to pdf and both end up placing a # in the pdf where the unicode character should be. I don't know where to go from here....

I've attached the .docx with the unicode characters, the .pdf I get as output, and both java programs I've tried for conversion. If someone could look at these and let me know what I'm doing wrong, I would be most appreciative.

Thanks
Mike Hudak

[jason]

Hi Mike

I've had a detailed look at this. Expect a fix in a nightly on Monday, which will also make its way into a 3.1maintenance release later in the month.

cheers .. Jason

[jason]

Please try http://www.docx4java.org/docx4j/docx4j- ... 140716.jar

Please note that for this nightly, you'll also need to add http://search.maven.org/#artifactdetail ... 0%7Cbundle
(for com.google.common.cache.LoadingCache)

[MikeH]

So far, so good!

I tried using the new nightly (as well as adding the extra library) and was successfully able to have ballot boxes appear within the generated PDF.

(All code remained the same as my original post, only added the nightly and the extra library to the classpath for compile and run)

Thank you for all of your help!

Mike