The following table summarizes the font capabilities of the various Apache� FOP renderers:
| Renderer | Base-14 | AWT/OS | Custom | Custom Embedding |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| yes | no | yes | yes | |
| PostScript | yes | no | yes | yes |
| PCL | yes (modified) | yes (painted as bitmaps) | yes (painted as bitmaps) | no |
| AFP | no | no | yes | yes |
| Java2D/AWT/Bitmap | if available from OS | yes | yes | n/a (display only) |
| if available from OS | yes | yes | controlled by OS printer driver | |
| RTF | n/a (font metrics not needed) | n/a | n/a | n/a |
| TXT | yes (used for layout but not for output) | no | yes (used for layout but not for output) | no |
| XML | yes | no | yes | n/a |
The Adobe PostScript and PDF Specification specify a set of 14 fonts that must be available to every PostScript interpreter and PDF reader: Helvetica (normal, bold, italic, bold italic), Times (normal, bold, italic, bold italic), Courier (normal, bold, italic, bold italic), Symbol and ZapfDingbats.
The following font family names are hard-coded into FOP for the Base-14 font set:
| Base-14 font | font families |
|---|---|
| Helvetica | Helvetica, sans-serif, SansSerif |
| Times | Times, Times Roman, Times-Roman, serif, any |
| Courier | Courier, monospace, Monospaced |
| Symbol | Symbol |
| ZapfDingbats | ZapfDingbats |
Please note that recent versions of Adobe Acrobat Reader replace "Helvetica" with "Arial" and "Times" with "Times New Roman" internally. GhostScript replaces "Helvetica" with "Nimbus Sans L" and "Times" with "Nimbus Roman No9 L". Other document viewers may do similar font substitutions. If you need to make sure that there are no such substitutions, you need to specify an explicit font and embed it in the target document.
When FOP does not have a specific font at its disposal (because it's not installed in the operating system or set up in FOP's configuration), the font is replaced with "any". "any" is internally mapped to the Base-14 font "Times" (see above).
Every font contains a particular set of glyphs. If no glyph can be found for a given character, FOP will issue a warning and use the glpyh for "#" (if available) instead. Before it does that, it consults a (currently hard-coded) registry of glyph substitution groups (see Glyphs.java in Apache XML Graphics Commons). This registry can supply alternative glyphs in some cases (like using space when a no-break space is requested). But there's no guarantee that the result will be as expected (for example, in the case of hyphens and similar glyphs). A better way is to use a font that has all the necessary glyphs. This glyph substitution is only a last resort.
The Java2D family of renderers (Java2D, AWT, Print, TIFF, PNG), use the Java AWT subsystem for font metric information. Through operating system registration, the AWT subsystem knows what fonts are available on the system, and the font metrics for each one.
When working with one of these output formats and you're missing a font, just install it in your operating system and they should be available for these renderers. Please note that this is not true for other output formats such as PDF or PostScript.
Support for custom fonts is highly output format dependent (see above table). This section shows how to add Type 1 and TrueType fonts to the PDF, PostScript and Java2D-based renderers. Other renderers (like AFP) support other font formats. Details in this case can be found on the page about output formats.
In earlier FOP versions, it was always necessary to create an XML font metrics file if you wanted to add a custom font. This unconvenient step has been removed and in addition to that, FOP supports auto-registration of fonts, i.e. FOP can find fonts installed in your operating system or can scan user-specified directories for fonts. Font registration via XML font metrics file is still supported and may still be necessary for some very special cases as fallback variant while we stabilize font auto-detection.
Basic information about fonts can be found at:
If you want FOP to use custom fonts, you need to tell it where to find them. This is done in the configuration file and once per renderer (because each output format is a little different). In the basic form, you can either tell FOP to find your operating system fonts or you can specify directories that it will search for support fonts. These fonts will then automatically be registered.
The instructions found above should be sufficient for most users. Below are some additional instructions in case the basic font configuration doesn't lead to the desired results.
FOP includes PFMReader, which reads the PFM file that normally comes with a Type 1 font, and generates an appropriate font metrics file for it. To use it, run the class org.apache.fop.fonts.apps.PFMReader:
Windows:
Unix:
PFMReader [options]:
FOP includes TTFReader, which reads the TTF file and generates an appropriate font metrics file for it. Use it in a similar manner to PFMReader. For example, to create such a metrics file in Windows from the TrueType font at c:\myfonts\cmr10.ttf:
TTFReader [options]:
| Issue | WinAnsi | CID-keyed |
|---|---|---|
| Usable Character Set | Limited to WinAnsi character set, which is roughly equivalent to iso-8889-1. | Limited only by the characters in the font itself. |
| Embedding the Font | Optional. | Mandatory. Not embedding the font produces invalid PDF documents. |
TrueType collections (.ttc files) contain more than one font. To create metrics files for these fonts, you must specify which font in the collection should be generated, by using the "-ttcname" option with the TTFReader.
To get a list of the fonts in a collection, just start the TTFReader as if it were a normal TrueType file (without the -ttcname option). It will display all of the font names and exit with an Exception.
Here is an example of generating a metrics file for a .ttc file:
Alternatively, the individual sub-fonts of a TrueType Collections can be selected using the "sub-font" attribute on the "font" element. That means that generating an XML font metrics file for TrueType collections is not necessary anymore. Example:
You must tell FOP how to find and use the font metrics files by registering them in the FOP Configuration. Add entries for your custom fonts, regardless of font type, to the configuration file in a manner similar to the following:
When the "auto-detect" flag is set in the configuration, FOP will automatically search for fonts in the default paths for your operating system.
FOP will also auto-detect fonts which are available in the classpath, if they are described as "application/x-font" in the MANIFEST.MF file. For example, if your .jar file contains font/myfont.ttf:
This feature allows you to create JAR files containing fonts. The JAR files can be added to fop by providem them in the classpath, e.g. copying them into the lib/ directory.
Apache FOP maintains a cache file that is used to speed up auto-detection. This file is usually found in the ".fop" directory under the user's home directory. It's called "fop-fonts.cache". When the user's home directory is not writable, the font cache file is put in the directory for temporary files.
If there was a problem loading a particular font, it is flagged in the cache file so it is not loaded anymore. So, if a font is actually around but is still not found by Apache FOP, it's worth a try to delete the font cache file which forces Apache FOP to reparse all fonts.
By default, all fonts are embedded if an output format supports font embedding. In some cases, however, it is preferred that some fonts are only referenced. When working with referenced fonts it is important to be in control of the target environment where the produced document is consumed, i.e. the necessary fonts have to be installed there.
There are two different ways how you can specify that a font should be referenced:
At the moment, you can only match fonts against their font-family. It is possible to use
regular expressions as is shown in the second example above ("DejaVu.*"). The syntax for
the regular expressions used here are the one used by the
java.util.regex package.
So, in the above snippet "Helvetica" and all variants of the "DejaVu" font family are
referenced. If you want to reference all fonts, just specify font-family=".*".
The referenced-fonts element can be placed either inside the general
fonts element (right under the root) or in the fonts element
under the renderer configuration. In the first case, matches apply to all renderers.
In the second case, matches only apply to the renderer where the element was specified.
Both cases can be used at the same time.
Various notes related to embedded fonts:
When a <substitutions/> section is defined in the configuration, FOP will re-map any font-family references found in your FO input to a given substitution font.
For example you could make all FO font-family references to 'Arial' with weights between 700 and 900 reference the normal 'Arial Black' font.
There are two font selection strategies: character-by-character or auto. The default is auto.
Auto selected the first font from the list which is able to display the most characters in a given word. This means (assume font A has characters for abclmn, font B for lnmxyz, fontlist is A,B):
Character-by-Character is NOT yet supported!
FOP contains a small command-line tool that lets you generate a list of all configured
fonts. Its class name is: org.apache.fop.tools.fontlist.FontListMain.
Run it with the "-?" parameter to get help for the various options.