HttpServletResponse - CharacterEncoding - PDF

Question

I'm trying to write a PDF that containts special (French) characters, but the characters are displayed incorrectly.
response = HttpServletResponse
doc= byte[] that contains my PDF
response.setContentType("application/pdf;charset=UTF-8;");
response.setHeader("Content-Disposition", "filename=document-" + doc.getId() + ".pdf");
response.setCharacterEncoding("UTF-8");
response.getOutputStream().write(doc);
response.flushBuffer();When I try to write � I get some weird useless characters.
I read that response.setCharacterEncoding("UTF-8"); doesn't do anthing if you write to response.getOutputStream()
So I changed that to:
response.setContentType("application/pdf;charset=UTF-8;");
response.setHeader("Content-Disposition", "filename=document-" + doc.getId() + ".pdf");
response.setCharacterEncoding("UTF-8");
Writer goodWriter = new java.io.OutputStreamWriter(response.getOutputStream(), "UTF-8" );
for (int i = 0 ; i <  doc.length ; i++) {
     goodWriter.write(doc);
response.flushBuffer();
However, that also doens't work. I still get the same useless characters. Which I find strange because the following code does display the characters correctly (to HTML, not to PDF)response.setContentType( "text/html;charset=UTF-8" );
response.setHeader("Content-Disposition", "filename=document-" + doc.getId() + ".pdf");
response.setCharacterEncoding("UTF-8");
Writer goodWriter = new java.io.OutputStreamWriter(response.getOutputStream(), "UTF-8" );
for (int i = 0 ; i < doc.length ; i++) {
goodWriter.write("���");
response.flushBuffer();
So the last code block, gives me the desired result: "���".
Anyone can tell me how I can get "���" in my PDF? Am I missing something?
(the last for-loop is useless, I'm just trying to get it to work)                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               

Answer 1

Bart_Blommaerts wrote:
I'm trying to write a PDF that containts special (French) characters, but the characters are displayed incorrectly.Why do you think that this is been caused by HTTP/HTML? You're sending nothing more than a binary stream to the client side. A PDF is a binary file, not a text file. The client side application which is used to view the PDF file must be configured properly.
I read that response.setCharacterEncoding("UTF-8"); doesn't do anthing if you write to response.getOutputStream()You need HttpServletResponse#getWriter() rather than getOutputStream(). Reader and Writer handles character streams. InputStream and OutputStream handles binary streams. But you shouldn't be using a Writer when you want to send binary data.
Anyone can tell me how I can get "���" in my PDF? Am I missing something?Are you generating a PDF on the fly or just streaming it from local disk? If the first, you should be setting the correct charset in the PDF generator API used. If the last, then it is a client side setting.