Develop Reference

How to Extract Diagonal watermark from pdf using PDFBOX and Extract Text by maintaining alignment

How can I extract diagonal watermark text from PDF using PDFBox ?
After referring to ExtractText's rotationMagic option, I am now extracting vertical and horizontal watermarks but not diagonal. This is my code so far.
class AngleCollector extends PDFTextStripper {
private final Set<Integer> angles = new TreeSet<>();
AngleCollector() throws IOException {}
Set<Integer> getAngles() {
return angles;
}
#Override
protected void processTextPosition(TextPosition text) {
int angle = ExtractText.getAngle(text);
angle = (angle + 360) % 360;
angles.add(angle);
}
}
class FilteredTextStripper extends PDFTextStripper {
FilteredTextStripper() throws IOException {
}
#Override
protected void processTextPosition(TextPosition text) {
int angle = ExtractText.getAngle(text);
if (angle == 0) {
super.processTextPosition(text);
}
}
}
final class ExtractText {
static int getAngle(TextPosition text) {
//The Matrix containing the starting text position
Matrix m = text.getTextMatrix().clone();
m.concatenate(text.getFont().getFontMatrix());
return (int) Math.round(Math.toDegrees(Math.atan2(m.getShearY(), m.getScaleY())));
}
private List<String> getAnnots(PDPage page) throws IOException {
List<String> returnList = new ArrayList<>();
for (PDAnnotation pdAnnot : page.getAnnotations()) {
if(pdAnnot.getContents() != null && !pdAnnot.getContents().isEmpty()) {
returnList.add(pdAnnot.getContents());
}
}
return returnList;
}
public void extractPages(int startPage, int endPage, PDFTextStripper stripper, PDDocument document, Writer output) {
for (int p = startPage; p <= endPage; ++p) {
stripper.setStartPage(p);
stripper.setEndPage(p);
try {
PDPage page = document.getPage(p - 1);
for (var annot : getAnnots(page)) {
output.write(annot);
}
int rotation = page.getRotation();
page.setRotation(0);
var angleCollector = new AngleCollector();
angleCollector.setStartPage(p);
angleCollector.setEndPage(p);
angleCollector.writeText(document, output);
for (int angle : angleCollector.getAngles()) {
// prepend a transformation
try (var cs = new PDPageContentStream(document, page,
PDPageContentStream.AppendMode.PREPEND, false)) {
cs.transform(Matrix.getRotateInstance(-Math.toRadians(angle), 0, 0));
}
stripper.writeText(document, output);
// remove prepended transformation
((COSArray) page.getCOSObject().getItem(COSName.CONTENTS)).remove(0);
}
page.setRotation(rotation);
} catch (IOException ex) {
System.err.println("Failed to process page " + p + ex);
}
}
}
}
public class pdfTest {
private pdfTest() {
}
public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {
var pdfFile = "test-resources/pdf/pdf_sample_2.pdf";
Writer output = new OutputStreamWriter(System.out, StandardCharsets.UTF_8);
var etObj = new ExtractText();
var rawDoc = PDDocument.load(new File(pdfFile));
PDFTextStripper stripper = new FilteredTextStripper();
if(rawDoc.getDocumentCatalog().getAcroForm() != null) {
rawDoc.getDocumentCatalog().getAcroForm().flatten();
}
etObj.extractPages(1, rawDoc.getNumberOfPages(), stripper, rawDoc, output);
output.flush();
}
}
Edit 1:
I am also unable to detect form (Acro, XFA) field contents via TextExtractor code with correct Alignment. How can I do that ?
I am attaching the sample PDFs for references.
Sample PDF 1
Sample PDF 2
I require following things using PDFBox
Diagonal text detection. (including watermarks).
Form fields extraction by maintaining Proper alignment.

In your "question" you actually ask multiple distinct questions. I'll look into each of them. The answers will be less specific than you'd probably wish because your questions are based on assumptions that are not all true.
"How can I extract diagonal watermark text from PDF using PDFBox ?"
First of all, PDF text extraction works by inspecting the instructions in content streams of a page and contained XObjects, finding text drawing instructions therein, taking the coordinates and orientations and the string parameters thereof, mapping the strings to Unicode, and arranging the many individual Unicode strings by their coordinates and orientations in a single content string.
In case of PDFBox the PDFTextStripper as-is does this with a limited support for orientation processing, but it can be extended to filter the text pieces by orientation for better orientation support as shown in the ExtractText example with rotation magic activated.
double_watermark.pdf
In case of your double_watermark.pdf example PDF, though, the diagonal text "Top Secret" is not created using text drawing instructions but instead path construction and painting instructions, as Tilman already remarked. (Actually the paths here all are sequences of very short lines, no curves are used, which you can see using a high zoom factor.) Thus, PDF text extraction cannot extract this text.
To answer your question
How can I extract diagonal watermark text from PDF using PDFBox ?
in this context, therefore: You can not.
(You can of course use PDFBox as a PDF processing framework based on which you also collect paths and try to match them to characters, but would be a greater project by itself. Or you can use PDFBox to draw the pages as bitmaps and apply OCR to those bitmaps.)
"I am also unable to detect form (Acro, XFA) field contents via TextExtractor code with correct Alignment. How can I do that ?"
Form data in AcroForm or XFA form definitions are not part of the page content streams or the XObject content streams referenced from therein. Thus, they are not immediately subject to text extraction.
AcroForm forms
AcroForm form fields are abstract PDF data objects which may or may not have associated content streams for display. To include them into the content streams text extraction operates on, you can first flatten the form. As you mentioned in your own answer, you also have to activate sorting to extract the field contents in context.
Beware, PDF renderers do have certain freedoms when creating the visualization of a form field. Thus, text extraction order may be slightly different from what you expect.
XFA forms
XFA form definitions are a cuckoo's egg in PDF. They are XML streams which are not related to regular PDF objects; furthermore, XFA in PDFs has been deprecated a number of years ago. Thus, most PDF libraries don't support XFA forms.
PDFBox only allows to extract or replace the XFA XML stream. Thus, there is no immediate support for XFA form contents during text extraction.

Form fields extraction by maintaining Proper alignment.
This is solved by
setSortByPosition

Handle many unicode caracters with PDFBox

I am writing a Java function which takes a String as a parameter and produce a PDF as an output with PDFBox.
Everything is working fine as long as I use latin characters.
However, I don't know in advance what will be the input, and it might be some English as well as Chinese or Japanese characters.
In the case of non latin characters, here is the error I get:
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: U+3053 ('kohiragana') is not available in this font Helvetica encoding: WinAnsiEncoding
at org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.font.PDType1Font.encode(PDType1Font.java:426)
at org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.font.PDFont.encode(PDFont.java:324)
at org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.PDPageContentStream.showTextInternal(PDPageContentStream.java:509)
at org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.PDPageContentStream.showText(PDPageContentStream.java:471)
at com.mylib.pdf.PDFBuilder.generatePdfFromString(PDFBuilder.java:122)
at com.mylib.pdf.PDFBuilder.main(PDFBuilder.java:111)
If I understand correctly, I have to use a specific font for Japanese, another one for Chinese and so on, because the one that I am using (Helvetiva) doesn't handle all required unicode characters.
I could also use a font which handle all these unicode characters, such as Arial Unicode. However this font is under a specific license so I cannot use it and I haven't found another one.
I found some projects that want to overcome this issue, like the Google NOTO project.
However, this project provides multiple font files. So I would have to choose, at runtime, the correct file to load depending on the input I have.
So I am facing 2 options, one of which I don't know how to implement properly:
Keep searching for a font that handle almost every unicode character (where is this grail I am desperately seeking?!)
Try to detect which language is used and select a font depending on it.
Despite the fact that I don't know (yet) how to do that, I don't find it to be a clean implementation, as the mapping between the input and the font file will be hardcoded, meaning I will have to hardcode all the possible mappings.
Is there another solution?
Am I completely off tracks?
Thanks in advance for your help and guidance!
Here is the code I use to generate the PDF:
public static void main(String args[]) throws IOException {
String latinText = "This is latin text";
String japaneseText = "これは日本語です";
// This works good
generatePdfFromString(latinText);
// This generate an error
generatePdfFromString(japaneseText);
}
private static OutputStream generatePdfFromString(String content) throws IOException {
PDPage page = new PDPage();
try (PDDocument doc = new PDDocument();
PDPageContentStream contentStream = new PDPageContentStream(doc, page)) {
doc.addPage(page);
contentStream.setFont(PDType1Font.HELVETICA, 12);
// Or load a specific font from a file
// contentStream.setFont(PDType0Font.load(this.doc, new File("/fontPath.ttf")), 12);
contentStream.beginText();
contentStream.showText(content);
contentStream.endText();
contentStream.close();
OutputStream os = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
doc.save(os);
return os;
}
}

A better solution than waiting for a font or guessing a text's language is to have a multitude of fonts and selecting the correct font on a glyph-by-glyph base.
You already found the Google Noto Fonts which are a good base collection of fonts for this task.
Unfortunately, though, Google publishes the Noto CJK fonts only as OpenType fonts (.otf), not as TrueType fonts (.ttf), a policy that isn't likely to change, cf. the Noto fonts issue 249 and others. On the other hand PDFBox does not support OpenType fonts and isn't actively working on OpenType support either, cf. PDFBOX-2482.
Thus, one has to convert the OpenType font somehow to TrueType. I simply took the file shared by djmilch in his blog post FREE FONT NOTO SANS CJK IN TTF.
Font selection per character
So you essentially need a method which checks your text character by character and dissects it into chunks which can be drawn using the same font.
Unfortunately I don't see a better method to ask a PDFBox PDFont whether it knows a glyph for a given character than to actually try to encode the character and consider a IllegalArgumentException a "no".
I, therefore, implemented that functionality using the following helper class TextWithFont and method fontify:
class TextWithFont {
final String text;
final PDFont font;
TextWithFont(String text, PDFont font) {
this.text = text;
this.font = font;
}
public void show(PDPageContentStream canvas, float fontSize) throws IOException {
canvas.setFont(font, fontSize);
canvas.showText(text);
}
}
(AddTextWithDynamicFonts inner class)
List<TextWithFont> fontify(List<PDFont> fonts, String text) throws IOException {
List<TextWithFont> result = new ArrayList<>();
if (text.length() > 0) {
PDFont currentFont = null;
int start = 0;
for (int i = 0; i < text.length(); ) {
int codePoint = text.codePointAt(i);
int codeChars = Character.charCount(codePoint);
String codePointString = text.substring(i, i + codeChars);
boolean canEncode = false;
for (PDFont font : fonts) {
try {
font.encode(codePointString);
canEncode = true;
if (font != currentFont) {
if (currentFont != null) {
result.add(new TextWithFont(text.substring(start, i), currentFont));
}
currentFont = font;
start = i;
}
break;
} catch (Exception ioe) {
// font cannot encode codepoint
}
}
if (!canEncode) {
throw new IOException("Cannot encode '" + codePointString + "'.");
}
i += codeChars;
}
result.add(new TextWithFont(text.substring(start, text.length()), currentFont));
}
return result;
}
(AddTextWithDynamicFonts method)
Example use
Using the method and the class above like this
String latinText = "This is latin text";
String japaneseText = "これは日本語です";
String mixedText = "Tこhれiはs日 本i語sで すlatin text";
generatePdfFromStringImproved(latinText).writeTo(new FileOutputStream("Cccompany-Latin-Improved.pdf"));
generatePdfFromStringImproved(japaneseText).writeTo(new FileOutputStream("Cccompany-Japanese-Improved.pdf"));
generatePdfFromStringImproved(mixedText).writeTo(new FileOutputStream("Cccompany-Mixed-Improved.pdf"));
(AddTextWithDynamicFonts test testAddLikeCccompanyImproved)
ByteArrayOutputStream generatePdfFromStringImproved(String content) throws IOException {
try ( PDDocument doc = new PDDocument();
InputStream notoSansRegularResource = AddTextWithDynamicFonts.class.getResourceAsStream("NotoSans-Regular.ttf");
InputStream notoSansCjkRegularResource = AddTextWithDynamicFonts.class.getResourceAsStream("NotoSansCJKtc-Regular.ttf") ) {
PDType0Font notoSansRegular = PDType0Font.load(doc, notoSansRegularResource);
PDType0Font notoSansCjkRegular = PDType0Font.load(doc, notoSansCjkRegularResource);
List<PDFont> fonts = Arrays.asList(notoSansRegular, notoSansCjkRegular);
List<TextWithFont> fontifiedContent = fontify(fonts, content);
PDPage page = new PDPage();
doc.addPage(page);
try ( PDPageContentStream contentStream = new PDPageContentStream(doc, page)) {
contentStream.beginText();
for (TextWithFont textWithFont : fontifiedContent) {
textWithFont.show(contentStream, 12);
}
contentStream.endText();
}
ByteArrayOutputStream os = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
doc.save(os);
return os;
}
}
(AddTextWithDynamicFonts helper method)
I get
for latinText = "This is latin text"
for japaneseText = "これは日本語です"
and for mixedText = "Tこhれiはs日 本i語sで すlatin text"
Some asides
I retrieved the fonts as Java resources but you can use any kind of InputStream for them.
The font selection mechanism above can quite easily be combined with the line breaking mechanism shown in this answer and the justification extension thereof in this answer

Below is another implementation of splitting a plain text into the chunks of TextWithFont objects. Algorithm does character-by-character encoding and always tries to encode with a main font and only in the case of a failure will proceed with the next fonts in the list of fallback fonts.
Main classwith properties:
public class SplitByFontsProcessor {
/** Text to be processed */
private String text;
/** List of fonts to be used for processing */
private List<PDFont> fonts;
/** Main font to be used for processing */
private PDFont mainFont;
/** List of fallback fonts to be used for processing. It does not contain the main font. */
private List<PDFont> fallbackFonts;
........
}
Methods within the same class:
private List<TextWithFont> splitUsingFallbackFonts() throws IOException {
final List<TextWithFont> fontifiedText = new ArrayList<>();
final StringBuilder strBuilder = new StringBuilder();
boolean isHandledByMainFont = false;
// Iterator over Unicode codepoints in Java string
final PrimitiveIterator.OfInt iterator = text.codePoints().iterator();
while (iterator.hasNext()) {
int codePoint = iterator.nextInt();
final String stringCodePoint = new String(Character.toChars(codePoint));
// try to encode Unicode codepoint
try {
// Multi-byte encoding with 1 to 4 bytes.
mainFont.encode(stringCodePoint); // fails here if can not be handled by the font
strBuilder.append(stringCodePoint); // append if succeeded to encode
isHandledByMainFont = true;
} catch(IllegalArgumentException ex) {
// IllegalArgumentException is thrown if character can not be handled by a given Font
// Adding successfully handled characters so far
if (StringUtils.isNotEmpty(strBuilder.toString())) {
fontifiedText.add(new TextWithFont(strBuilder.toString(), mainFont));
strBuilder.setLength(0);// clear StringBuilder
}
handleByFallbackFonts(fontifiedText, stringCodePoint);
isHandledByMainFont = false;
} // end main font try-catch
}
// If this is the last successful run that was handled by main font, then add result
if (isHandledByMainFont) {
fontifiedText.add(new TextWithFont(strBuilder.toString(), mainFont));
}
return mergeAdjacents(fontifiedText);
}
Method handleByFallbackFonts():
private void handleByFallbackFonts(List<TextWithFont> fontifiedText, String stringCodePoint)
throws IOException {
final StringBuilder strBuilder = new StringBuilder();
boolean isHandledByFallbackFont = false;
// Retry with fallback fonts
final Iterator<PDFont> fallbackFontsIterator = fallbackFonts.iterator();
while(fallbackFontsIterator.hasNext()) {
try {
final PDFont fallbackFont = fallbackFontsIterator.next();
fallbackFont.encode(stringCodePoint); // fails here if can not be handled by the font
isHandledByFallbackFont = true;
strBuilder.append(stringCodePoint);
fontifiedText.add(new TextWithFont(strBuilder.toString(), fallbackFont));
break; // if successfully handled - break the loop
} catch(IllegalArgumentException exception) {
// do nothing, proceed to the next font
}
} // end while
// If character was not handled and this is the last font - throw an exception
if (!isHandledByFallbackFont) {
final String fontNames = fonts.stream()
.map(PDFont::getName)
.collect(Collectors.joining(", "));
int codePoint = stringCodePoint.codePointAt(0);
throw new TextProcessingException(
String.format("Unicode code point [%s] can not be handled by configured fonts: [%s]",
codePoint, fontNames));
}
}
Method splitUsingFallbackFonts() returns a list of TextWithFont objects in which adjacent objects with the same font will not be necessarily belong to the same object. This happens because an algorithm will always first retry to render a character by the main font, and in case it fails, it will create a new object with the font capable of rendering the character. So we need to call a utility method, mergeAdjacents(), which will merge them together.
private static List<TextWithFont> mergeAdjacents(final List<TextWithFont> fontifiedText) {
final Deque<TextWithFont> result = new LinkedList<>();
for (TextWithFont elem : fontifiedText) {
final TextWithFont resElem = result.peekLast();
if (resElem == null || !resElem.getFont().equals(elem.getFont())) {
result.addLast(elem);
} else {
result.addLast(merge(result.pollLast(), elem));
}
}
return new ArrayList<>(result);
}

Render Type3 font character as image using PDFBox

In my project, I'm stuck with necessity to parse PDF file, that contains some characters rendered by Type3 fonts. So, what I need to do is to render such characters into BufferedImage for further processing.
I'm not sure if I'm looking in correct way, but I'm trying to get PDType3CharProc for such characters:
PDType3Font font = (PDType3Font)textPosition.getFont();
PDType3CharProc charProc = font.getCharProc(textPosition.getCharacterCodes()[0]);
and the input stream of this procedure contains following data:
54 0 1 -1 50 43 d1
q
49 0 0 44 1.1 -1.1 cm
BI
/W 49
/H 44
/BPC 1
/IM true
ID
<some binary data here>
EI
Q
but unfortunately I don't have any idea how can I use this data to render character into an image using PDFBox (or any other Java libraries).
Am I looking in correct direction, and what can I do with this data?
If not, are there some other tools that can solve such problem?

Unfortunately PDFBox out-of-the-box does not provide a class to render contents of arbitrary XObjects (like the type 3 font char procs), at least as far as I can see.
But it does provide a class for rendering complete PDF pages; thus, to render a given type 3 font glyph, one can simply create a page containing only that glyph and render this temporary page!
Assuming, for example, the type 3 font is defined on the first page of a PDDocument document and has name F1, all its char procs can be rendered like this:
PDPage page = document.getPage(0);
PDResources pageResources = page.getResources();
COSName f1Name = COSName.getPDFName("F1");
PDType3Font fontF1 = (PDType3Font) pageResources.getFont(f1Name);
Map<String, Integer> f1NameToCode = fontF1.getEncoding().getNameToCodeMap();
COSDictionary charProcsDictionary = fontF1.getCharProcs();
for (COSName key : charProcsDictionary.keySet())
{
COSStream stream = (COSStream) charProcsDictionary.getDictionaryObject(key);
PDType3CharProc charProc = new PDType3CharProc(fontF1, stream);
PDRectangle bbox = charProc.getGlyphBBox();
if (bbox == null)
bbox = charProc.getBBox();
Integer code = f1NameToCode.get(key.getName());
if (code != null)
{
PDDocument charDocument = new PDDocument();
PDPage charPage = new PDPage(bbox);
charDocument.addPage(charPage);
charPage.setResources(pageResources);
PDPageContentStream charContentStream = new PDPageContentStream(charDocument, charPage);
charContentStream.beginText();
charContentStream.setFont(fontF1, bbox.getHeight());
charContentStream.getOutput().write(String.format("<%2X> Tj\n", code).getBytes());
charContentStream.endText();
charContentStream.close();
File result = new File(RESULT_FOLDER, String.format("4700198773-%s-%s.png", key.getName(), code));
PDFRenderer renderer = new PDFRenderer(charDocument);
BufferedImage image = renderer.renderImageWithDPI(0, 96);
ImageIO.write(image, "PNG", result);
charDocument.close();
}
}
(RenderType3Character.java test method testRender4700198773)
Considering the textPosition variable in the OP's code, he quite likely attempts this from a text extraction use case. Thus, he'll have to either pre-generate the bitmaps as above and simply look them up by name or adapt the code to match the available information in his use case (e.g. he might not have the original page at hand, only the font object; in that case he cannot copy the resources of the original page but instead may create a new resources object and add the font object to it).
Unfortunately the OP did not provide a sample PDF. Thus I used one from another stack overflow question, 4700198773.pdf from extract text with custom font result non readble for my test. There obviously might remain issues with the OP's own files.

I stumbled upon the same issue and I was able to render Type3 font by modifying PDFRenderer and the underlying PageDrawer:
class Type3PDFRenderer extends PDFRenderer
{
private PDFont font;
public Type3PDFRenderer(PDDocument document, PDFont font)
{
super(document);
this.font = font;
}
#Override
protected PageDrawer createPageDrawer(PageDrawerParameters parameters) throws IOException
{
FontType3PageDrawer pd = new FontType3PageDrawer(parameters, this.font);
pd.setAnnotationFilter(super.getAnnotationsFilter());//as done in the super class
return pd;
}
}
class FontType3PageDrawer extends PageDrawer
{
private PDFont font;
public FontType3PageDrawer(PageDrawerParameters parameters, PDFont font) throws IOException
{
super(parameters);
this.font = font;
}
#Override
public PDGraphicsState getGraphicsState()
{
PDGraphicsState gs = super.getGraphicsState();
gs.getTextState().setFont(this.font);
return gs;
}
}
Simply use Type3PDFRenderer instead of PDFRendered. Of course if you have multiple fonts this needs some more modification to handle them.
Edit: tested with pdfbox 2.0.9

How to resolve "...is not available in this font's encoding"?

So I am using PDFBox to fill in some pdfs. So far everything was great - I created a form in pdf with Avenir Light font, and I could fill it in. However, the problem that just now showed up, is that when I am trying to fill the pdf using letters such as ł, ą, ć ... I get the following error:
U+0142 is not available in this font's encoding: MacRomanEncoding with differences
with different numbers.
Now, my question is - how can I fix this, so that I can fill the form automatically? When I open the pdf in Acrobat Reader, I can insert those letters, and I dont get any errors. Here is how I set the field:
public void setField(PDDocument document, PDField field, String value ) throws IOException {
if( field != null && value != null) {
try{
field.setValue(value);
} catch (Exception e){
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
else {
System.err.println( "No field found with name:" + field.getPartialName() );
}
}
UPDATE
I've been trying to upload my own Avenir-Light.tff like this:
PDFont font = PDType1Font.HELVETICA;
PDResources res = new PDResources();
COSName fontName = res.add(font);
acroForm.setDefaultResources(res);
String da = "/" + fontName.getName() + " 12 Tf 0 g";
acroForm.setDefaultAppearance(da);
However, this doesn't seem to have any impact on the printed fields, and throws almost the same message:
U+0104 ('Aogonek') is not available in this font Helvetica (generic: ArialMT) encoding: WinAnsiEncoding

PDFBox define 14 standard fonts in PDType1Font :
PDType1Font.TIMES_ROMAN PDType1Font.TIMES_BOLD
PDType1Font.TIMES_ITALI PDType1Font.TIMES_BOLD_ITALIC
PDType1Font.HELVETICA PDType1Font.HELVETICA_BOLD
PDType1Font.HELVETICA_OBLIQUE
PDType1Font.HELVETICA_BOLD_OBLIQUE PDType1Font.COURIER
PDType1Font.COURIER_BOLD PDType1Font.COURIER_OBLIQUE
PDType1Font.COURIER_BOLD_OBLIQUE PDType1Font.SYMBOL
PDType1Font.ZAPF_DINGBATS
So if you want to use Avenir-Light you have to load it from a .ttf file. You can do this as #TilmanHausherr suggested PDType0Font.load(doc, new File("path/Avenir-Light.ttf"), false).
PDFont font = PDType0Font.load(doc, new File("path/Avenir-Light.ttf"), false);
PDResources res = new PDResources();
COSName fontName = res.add(font);
acroForm.setDefaultResources(res);
String da = "/" + fontName.getName() + " 12 Tf 0 g";
acroForm.setDefaultAppearance(da);
Update
Do you know why it also displays a warning if form of: OpenType Layout
tables used in font Avenir-Light are not implemented in PDFBox and
will be ignored?
Avenir-light font uses OpenType Layout tables (Advanced Typographic) that PDFBox does not support yet. This advaned typographics will be ignored

How to get rid of Helvetica in iText XMLWorker?

We're using iText to generate PDF files from Java code, which works pretty well in most cases. A few days ago we started to generate PDF/A instead of normal PDF files which needs to embed all fonts. The iText Document is mostly build of custom PdfPTable and other classes where we control the fonts directly. All used fonts are created from TTF files loaded via the following code - which works just fine:
private BaseFont load(String path) {
try {
URL fontResource = PrintSettings.class.getResource(path);
if (fontResource == null) {
return null;
}
String fontPath = fontResource.toExternalForm();
BaseFont baseFont = BaseFont.createFont(fontPath, BaseFont.IDENTITY_H, BaseFont.EMBEDDED);
baseFont.setSubset(true);
return baseFont;
}
catch (DocumentException ex) {
Logger.getLogger(PrintSettings.class).warn("...");
}
catch (IOException ex) {
Logger.getLogger(PrintSettings.class).warn("...");
}
return FontFactory.getFont(PrintSettings.FONT, "UTF-8", true, 8f, Font.NORMAL, PrintSettings.COLOR_TEXT).getBaseFont();
}
Now we use one specific content type in the PDF which generates from HTML code. We use the XMLWorkerto handle that part. This worked just fine, as long as we didn't embed the fonts. But with PDF/A we need to embed all fonts and now we struggle with an unknown source of Helvetica usage.
We've tried to solve this by using our own FontProvider class like this one:
public class PrintFontProvider extends FontFactoryImp {
#Override
public Font getFont(String fontName, String encoding, boolean embedded, float size, int style, BaseColor color, boolean cached) {
// LiberationSans – http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberation_(Schriftart) – http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?item_id=OFL_web
if (style == Font.NORMAL) return new Font(this.load("fonts/Liberation/LiberationSans-Regular.ttf"), size, Font.NORMAL, color);
if (style == Font.BOLD) return new Font(this.load("fonts/Liberation/LiberationSans-Bold.ttf"), size, Font.NORMAL, color);
if (style == Font.BOLDITALIC) return new Font(this.load("fonts/Liberation/LiberationSans-BoldItalic.ttf"), size, Font.NORMAL, color);
if (style == Font.ITALIC) return new Font(this.load("fonts/Liberation/LiberationSans-Italic.ttf"), size, Font.NORMAL, color);
return new Font(this.load("fonts/Liberation/LiberationSans-Regular.ttf"), size, style, color);
}
private BaseFont load(String path) { ... }
}
It's connected with the XMLWorker using the following code:
HtmlPipelineContext html = new HtmlPipelineContext(null);
html.setTagFactory(Tags.getHtmlTagProcessorFactory());
CSSResolver css = XMLWorkerHelper.getInstance().getDefaultCssResolver(true);
// We need to control the FontProdiver!
html.setCssAppliers(new CssAppliersImpl(new PrintFontProvider()));
Pipeline<?> pipeline = new CssResolverPipeline(css, new HtmlPipeline(html, new PdfWriterPipeline(this.document, writer)));
XMLWorker worker = new XMLWorker(pipeline, true);
XMLParser p = new XMLParser(worker);
p.parse(new ByteArrayInputStream(StringUtils.iTextHTML(string).getBytes()));
Most simple HTML elements work this way... but there are some which seem to ignore the FontProvider and keep using Helvetica which won't be embedded in the PDF/A (we don't have that font). For example <ol><li>...</li></ol> make use of this.
Caused by: com.itextpdf.text.pdf.PdfXConformanceException: All the fonts must be embedded. This one isn't: Helvetica
at com.itextpdf.text.pdf.internal.PdfXConformanceImp.checkPDFXConformance(PdfXConformanceImp.java:225)
at com.itextpdf.text.pdf.PdfWriter.addSimple(PdfWriter.java:2192)
at com.itextpdf.text.pdf.PdfContentByte.setFontAndSize(PdfContentByte.java:1444)
at com.itextpdf.text.pdf.PdfDocument.writeLineToContent(PdfDocument.java:1463)
at com.itextpdf.text.pdf.ColumnText.go(ColumnText.java:968)
at com.itextpdf.text.pdf.ColumnText.go(ColumnText.java:841)
at com.itextpdf.text.pdf.ColumnText.showTextAligned(ColumnText.java:1189)
at com.itextpdf.text.pdf.ColumnText.showTextAligned(ColumnText.java:1208)
at com.itextpdf.text.pdf.PdfDocument.flushLines(PdfDocument.java:1193)
at com.itextpdf.text.pdf.PdfDocument.newPage(PdfDocument.java:830)
at com.itextpdf.text.Document.newPage(Document.java:367)
I've run out of ideas how to get rid of Helvetica for now... trying to solve this for 8+ hours now... any more ideas?

I've dug a little deeper and traveled from OrderedUnorderedList over ListItem to List...
/**
* Adds an <CODE>Element</CODE> to the <CODE>List</CODE>.
*
* #param o the element to add.
* #return true if adding the object succeeded
* #since 5.0.1 (signature changed to use Element)
*/
#Override
public boolean add(final Element o) {
if (o instanceof ListItem) {
ListItem item = (ListItem) o;
if (this.numbered || this.lettered) {
Chunk chunk = new Chunk(this.preSymbol, this.symbol.getFont());
chunk.setAttributes(this.symbol.getAttributes());
int index = this.first + this.list.size();
if ( this.lettered )
chunk.append(RomanAlphabetFactory.getString(index, this.lowercase));
else
chunk.append(String.valueOf(index));
chunk.append(this.postSymbol);
item.setListSymbol(chunk);
}
else {
item.setListSymbol(this.symbol);
}
item.setIndentationLeft(this.symbolIndent, this.autoindent);
item.setIndentationRight(0);
return this.list.add(item);
}
else if (o instanceof List) {
List nested = (List) o;
nested.setIndentationLeft(nested.getIndentationLeft() + this.symbolIndent);
this.first--;
return this.list.add(nested);
}
return false;
}
This code refers to this.symbol.getFont() which is set to undefined on class initialization...
public class List implements TextElementArray, Indentable {
[...]
/** This is the listsymbol of a list that is not numbered. */
protected Chunk symbol = new Chunk("- ");
I simply used another Chunk constructor which takes a Font of mine and voila... SOLVED. The numbered list no longer uses Helvetica but my own font which gets embedded properly.
This took me ages! Another way might have been to implement an own TagProcessor for <ol> but we don't have the time for this anymore. I'll file a bug report for this... we'll see if it gets fixed a bit more flexible.