How to change document text encoding or specify encoding of rendered text

[PetrKaleta]

Hello,
I'd like to use hexapdf to modify existing PDF document template, which was created in Adobe InDesign on Windows and contains central european characters. So its most probably in Windows 1250 or ISO 8859-2 encoding.

When i add that contains characters with diacritics, its not rendered properly or some of them are missing.

Here is the sample code i use:

HexaPDF::Document.open(TEMPLATE_PATH).tap do |doc|
  page = doc.pages[0]

  canvas = page.canvas(type: :overlay)
  canvas.font('Helvetica', size: 10)

  canvas.text('ěščřžýáíé', at: [0, 0])

  doc.write('foo.pdf', optimize: true)
end

When I try to use canvas.font('Helvetica', size: 10, custom_encoding: true) it seems to start working when I open rendered PDF on OSX or iOS, but its not on Android (some characters are missing).

Any idea how to fix that?

[gettalong]

So, the first error you get Type1 encoding has no codepoint for ecaron (HexaPDF::Error) is expected since the default encoding used by HexaPDF (which is not related to any encoding used in an opened PDF) just doesn't contain that codepoint.

As you found out you can work around this by using the custom_encoding: true option. When I reproduce this I get the following result (in various viewers like okular, evince and Adobe Reader)

It also works with mupdf on Android. So my guess is that the viewer you are using on Android can't handle non-standard Type1 encodings.

What you can try is using a TrueType font instead. This will also allow you to display much more characters.

[PetrKaleta]

Than you, using a TrueType font fixed this issue!