[Koha-devel] Unicode and PDF... a work-around?

[Ian Walls]

Fellow developers,


I've got a client who needs to print some pocket labels for their books.
Sadly, since some of these titles have some funky Unicode characters in the
245$abc, the PDF they generate comes out corrupted and unusable.  This is a
serious problem for their move forward with Koha.

My research on in the list archives shows that this is well-known problem,
and is in many ways out of our hands.  PDFs don't handle Unicode as natively
as we need, and the compromises to make it work are much less encouraging.
It seems like this just isn't going to work unless Adobe decides to help.
(see
http://koha.1045719.n5.nabble.com/Diacriticals-Unicode-and-PDF-s-td3068755.html#nonefor
more details)

This got me thinking about a potential alternative.  Perhaps we could offer
a 4th Label Creator output option (in addition to PDF, CSV and XML), of
HTML.  Using similar markup that we use for print holds and overdues, it may
be possible to recreate the page on the browser window in a format that
anyone can read (and if they can't, their local machine can install the
necessary fonts or language packs).  There are numerous Print To PDF options
for all kinds of browsers and platforms, so the end result could be the
same, only without our code having to do the heavy PDF lifting.

Does this sound like a feasible plan?  Am I missing any subtleties that
would make this untenable?

Cheers,


-Ian

-- 
Ian Walls
Lead Development Specialist
ByWater Solutions
Phone # (888) 900-8944
http://bywatersolutions.com
ian.walls at bywatersolutions.com
Twitter: @sekjal
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