[Koha-bugs] [Bug 2246] Label printing doesn't work with Unicode characters

[Mason James]

On 2008/12/2, at 12:05 PM, bugzilla-daemon at pippin.metavore.com wrote:

> http://bugs.koha.org/cgi-bin/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=2246
>
>
> joe.atzberger at liblime.com changed:
>
>            What    |Removed                     |Added
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 
> ------
>             Summary|Label printing doesn't work |Label printing  
> doesn't work
>                    |with Hindi characters       |with Unicode  
> characters
>
>
>
>
> ------- Comment #9 from joe.atzberger at liblime.com  2008-12-01 15:05  
> -------
> I disagree with Mason's assessment.  PDF generation fails when I  
> have added
> even one title with one (combining) diacritical character like:  
> "The séance".
> The error in the log is:
>
> label-print-pdf.pl: Wide character in syswrite at
> /usr/local/share/perl/5.8.8/PDF/Reuse.pm line 968, <DATA> line 228.,
> referer:
> http://staff-atz.dev.kohalibrary.com/cgi-bin/koha/labels/label- 
> manager.pl?op=add&batch_id=5&itemnumber=733
>

heya,

yeah i just hit the same error myself, weird huh....

Labels.pm: ### fontsize,
  label-print-pdf.pl: Wide character in syswrite at /usr/local/share/ 
perl/5.8.8
/PDF/Reuse.pm line 977.,

in a batch set seemingly without any unusual characters

>
> In the end, the TTFont would be embedded in each PDF generated,  
> meaning a set
> of barcodes might increase in filesize by several orders of magnitude.

embedding a TTF fontset in every PDF isnt very pretty - but if it  
works its better than nothing..

>
> In my opinion, PDF::Reuse has a rather severe Unicode workaround,  
> it does not
> have compatibility.  Maybe that's Adobe's fault and not the  
> module's, but right
> now I'm not sure this path is the right one.

Yep, i agree , but I cant see what the better alternative is at this  
stage either - a rewrite using PDF::API perhaps ??


the PDF spec seems to be quite TTF centric and doesnt really seem to  
'do' unicode so well?

like i said, its going to take some proof-of-concept testing to even  
get an 'é' displaying it looks like ;/

Mason.