Problem displaying Arabic characters in PDF using Java APIs

Question

We are experiencing a problem when attempting to display Arabic characters within a PDF document using the Java APIs.
The relevant Java code is as follows:
RTFProcessor processor = new RTFProcessor("example.rtf" );
processor.setOutput( “example.xsl” );
processor.setExtractXLIFF(true);
processor.process();
ByteArrayOutputStream dataOut = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
DataProcessor dataProcessor = new DataProcessor();
dataProcessor.setDataTemplate( example.xdt" );
if( parameterValues != null && parameterValues.length > 0 )
setReportParameters( dataProcessor, parameterValues ); // method to set any report parameters from the parameterValues list.
dataProcessor.setConnection( jdbcConnection );
dataProcessor.setOutput(dataOut);
dataProcessor.processData();
FOProcessor foProcessor = new FOProcessor();
foProcessor.setLocale( locale );
foProcessor.setData( new ByteArrayInputStream( dataOut.toByteArray() ) );
foProcessor.setTemplate( “example.xsl” );
String xliffFileNameAndPath = getXLIFFFile( “example”, locale );
if( xliffFileNameAndPath != null )
foProcessor.setXLIFF( xliffFileNameAndPath );
foProcessor.setOutput( "example.pdf" );
foProcessor.setOutputFormat(
outputFormat == PDF_FORMAT ? FOProcessor.FORMAT_PDF : FOProcessor.FORMAT_HTML );
foProcessor.generate();
The method getXLIFFFile( ) gets the relevant XLIFF file for the supplied report locale (if it exists) – the three test files that we used were Italian (example_it_IT.xlf), Spanish (example_es_ES.xlf) and Arabic (example_ar_AE.xlf).
I imported the following JAR files from the XML Publisher release (version 5.6.2) into my Java application: collections.jar, i18nAPI_v3.jar, versioninfo.jar, xdocore.jar and xmlparserv2.jar.
The output is OK for all three translations in HTML format, using a charset of UTF-8, and for Italian and Spanish in PDF format. However, the Arabic characters display as question marks in PDF format. The same issue occurs if I stream the output as a byte array straight to the HTTP response rather than save within a file.
Note that the same RTF, XDT and XLIFF files produce the correct output in both HTML and PDF when executed within XMLPublisher.
Thank you

Answer 1

Hi
I had a similar issue with arabic chars. With PDF layout, chars were appearing properly when preveiwd on local m/c, but as I implement file on server, it was displayed as ?????. I had raised a TAR 5798348.993 with oracle about this and they suggested to apply patch 4028294 Oracle Sourcing J Rollup and then patch 4182914. But later my users changed requirement and i cud not apply the patch to test if it works fine.
But here, you have suggested that installing fonts would do. Is it really that simple? If yes, dont know what is that patch for which I was told to apply.
Regards
Varun