Hi all,
Our customer is a big international company. As a result, the reports will (and have to) support a wide range of characters (including CJK ones).
I investigated the problem and found out the following info:
1. The Telerik support Team recommends to use Arial Unicode MS font to rich the goal ( Telerik Forum Thread 1, Telerik Forum Thread 2);
2. There is a problem using the Arial Unicode MS font as the reports' default font: Arial Unicode MS does not support Bold style natively, as a result we can't embed the glyphs to the generated pdf file ( Telerik Forum Thread 3 ). That means, the font have to be installed on the users' PCs;
3. Arial Unicode MS font is not free ( Monotype Co. website with prices ), but it is distributed with Microsoft Office ( Arial Unicode MS );
4. There is a special "Server License" mentioned on the Font Owners' website, saying, one has to buy it if he is going to "use it for Internet-based applications" and to "use font on server to generate reports" (please find an image attached). 4 cores server => $7,560 (huh?)
5. The Telerik support Team recommends to install MS Office on the server (as I understood from the context here: Telerik Forum Thread 2 ).
So... Could you please clarify several things?
1. Do we have to buy the font's Server License or it is just enough to install the MS Office on the server (and on the users' PCs, because of the 2nd point above)?
2. Are you sure? :)
I really appreciate any help you can provide.
Regards,
Constantine.
4 Answers, 1 is accepted
About the PDF rendering mechanism.
The only requirement is to use a font which supports all characters which should be displayed in the rendered documents. In this context Arial Unicode MS is just an example of a font with Unicode support, which can display text in various languages (it is not a requirement to use Arial Unicode MS).
If your requirements are to support Unicode characters, and bold, italic,underline features, you will need to search the Internet for such font, or use a custom one designed for your needs.
Once you have a font allowing you to visualize the data properly, the font must be installed on the server machine where reports will be processed and rendered. In case the font may not be available at the client, you can fully embed it in the PDF document - Design Considerations for PDF Rendering (Font Requirements).
I hope the provided information is helpful.
Regards,
Stef
Telerik
Rank 1
Hi Stef,
Thank you for the answer.
Yep, I understand that different fonts can be used, also I've studied the list of the most commonly used Unicode fonts (Unicode Fonts).
The are several reasons why I've chosen the Arial Unicode MS:
1. It is one of the most complete sans-serif Unicode fonts;
2. It is widely available (it's installed on the majority of users' PCs). It is important because of the following two points:
- There are only two possibilities to fix the "bold characters issue": to embed the font or to have it installed on users' PCs;
- We can't embed the Unicode font to the generated report file- this action will significantly increase the file size (+22 MB in case of Arial Unicode MS);
3. It was recommended by the Team:
<<In order to display Chinese characters, you should do the following:
1. Install the ArialUnicode font on your machine.:
...>> - Telerik Forum Thread 1
Also I'd like to mention, from my point of view, the following paragraph is a bit strange:
<<This mostly happens on the servers because in the majority of the cases they don't have Microsoft Office installed. Arial Unicode MS font is normally distributed as part of Microsoft Office.>> - Telerik Forum Thread 2
Because, as far as I understood, usage of the Arial Unicode MS font (distributed as a part of MS Office) will break the license agreement. One have to purchase the Server license...
Please let me know if my assumptions are not fully correct.
Once again, thank you for your help.
Regards,
Constantine.
Arial Unicode MS is not the only font that can be used. It is used as a proof of concept that proper fonts, with support for the used characters, allow the content to be rendered correctly (when it comes to PDF rendering). My advice is to search for a font that covers your requirements, which may be even a custom font designed for you.
If you want to avoid the fonts' requirement, you can test using the Image rendering to produces image files and then to gather the images into a single document with third party libraries (e.g. RadPdfProcessing).
Regards,
Stef
Telerik
Rank 1
Hi Stef,
Thank you for helping me.
I'm going to contact the Monotype to buy the license now.
Regards,
Constantine.