[Lazarus] fpPDF UTF8 encoded PDFString

[Michael W. Vogel]

Hi,

if I understand the documentation 
(https://partners.adobe.com/public/developer/en/pdf/PDFReference13.pdf) 
right, it should be possible to contain in the Latin Character Set in a 
PDF, also with fpPDF (which uses WinAnsiEncoding) and also with standard 
fonts.

These characters are shown in table D.1 Latin Character Set and 
Encodings on page 551 of the documentation.

If I now try to insert such characters, they aren't shown right in the 
created PDF (Adobe Reader XI, 64bit Windows 7, 32bit Lazarus 1.7 r52225 
FPC 3.1.1 r33528 i386-win32-win32/win64).


Simple try these steps to understand, what I mean:

- open Example "testfppdf" and add Run Parameters "-p 1" to only create 
the first page.
- add in the Source Editor in "testfppdf.lpr" line 139 some of the Latin 
Characters:

   P.WriteText(25, 20, 'Sample Text AÆÁÂÄÀÅÃBCÇDEÉÊËÈЀ');

- run your app and see the result (Adobe Reader XI, 64bit Windows 7):

Sample Text A???????BC?DE?????


If I convert the string to a UTF8-encoded one, the result is:

Sample Text AÆÁÂÄÀÅÃBCÇDEÉÊËÈЀ


(I also eliminated FtText1 := D.AddFont('FreeSans.ttf', 'FreeSans', 
clGreen); and the lines after line 139 to reduce the size of the 
attached PDFs, the result is the same)


I add the two PDFs (one with ACP encoding, one with UTF-8 encoding) to 
show you the results. I also add "UTF8_Encoded_PDFString.patch" to show 
you, what I have done.


I'm not sure, if this workaround is valid or there is a better solution. 
Please have a look at it.

Thank you


Kind regards

Michl


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Index: packages/fcl-pdf/src/fppdf.pp
===================================================================
--- packages/fcl-pdf/src/fppdf.pp	(revision 33528)
+++ packages/fcl-pdf/src/fppdf.pp	(working copy)
@@ -2380,6 +2380,7 @@
   FValue := AValue;
   if (Pos('(', FValue) > 0) or (Pos(')', FValue) > 0) or (Pos('\', FValue) > 0) then
     FValue := InsertEscape(FValue);
+  SetCodePage(RawByteString(FValue), CP_UTF8, True);
 end;
 
 { TPDFUTF8String }