rsmeineke has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Found it ....

in the PDF/API2/Resource/Font/CoreFont/courier.pm file I changed 

    'fontname' => 'Courier',

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to

   'fontname' => 'Courier-New',

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and I added -New, in the other three courier-related files 

'fontname' => 'Courier-New,Oblique',

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'fontname' => 'Courier-New,Bold',

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'fontname' => 'Courier-New,BoldOblique',

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and now all is right with the world!

======================%< snip >%================================

I'm wondering if it is just me ...

I recently had need for the Courier font in some PDF output. I have been trying to use the corefonts in PDF::API2 but can't seem to get anything other than Courier-Oblique for output. The other corefonts seem to render fine. Here is a mini test program: 

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;

use PDF::API2;

my @fonts = qw(
   Courier 
   Courier-Bold 
   Courier-BoldOblique 
   Courier-Oblique 
   Verdana 
   Times 
   Times-BoldItalic 
   Georgia 
   Georgia-Bold 
);

my $pdf  = PDF::API2->new;
my $page = $pdf->page;
my $text = $page->text;

my $y = 700;
$text->translate( 100, $y );

foreach my $f (@fonts) {
    my $cft = $pdf->corefont($f);
    $text->font( $cft, 12 );
    $text->text($f);

    $y -= 15;
    $text->translate( 100, $y );
}

$pdf->saveas('pdftest.pdf');
$pdf->end();

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I have tested this on a couple of my Linux boxes and always get the same result -- four lines of Courier-Oblique on the top. Any ideas where I might be going wrong?

Thanks, Robert M.

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: PDF::API2 and the Elusive Courier Font
by hippo (Archbishop) on Nov 07, 2013 at 14:02 UTC

    Your code as posted works fine for me (Fedora 64 Bit). Are you sure you have all the necessary fonts installed?

[reply]
      +1
      It appears that you do not have courier font. Maybe courier-regular?
      You'll need to check your font dir. On *BSD, it's in any of the directories located in
      /usr/local/lib/X11/fonts

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      HTH

      --Chris

      #!/usr/bin/perl -Tw
use perl::always;
my $perl_version = (5.12.5);
print $perl_version;
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[d/l]
Re: PDF::API2 and the Elusive Courier Font
by rnewsham (Curate) on Nov 07, 2013 at 14:16 UTC

    I have tested your code on one of my servers running CentOS 6.4 and it works for me.

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Re: PDF::API2 and the Elusive Courier Font
by kschwab (Vicar) on Nov 08, 2013 at 05:07 UTC

    The "convert" utility that comes with Imagemagick is handy for finding which fonts are installed, and what their names are.

    $ convert -list font| grep -i courier
  Font: Courier
    family: Courier
  Font: Courier-Bold
    family: Courier
  Font: Courier-BoldOblique
    family: Courier
  Font: Courier-Oblique
    family: Courier
  Font: Courier-10-Pitch-Bold
    family: Courier 10 Pitch
  Font: Courier-10-Pitch-Bold-Italic
    family: Courier 10 Pitch
  Font: Courier-10-Pitch-Italic
    family: Courier 10 Pitch
  Font: Courier-10-Pitch-Regular
    family: Courier 10 Pitch

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    If you're on a debian-derived linux: apt-get install imagemagick

[reply]
[d/l]

      Thanks to all who responded to my initial inquiry. A quick note of follow-up.

      "convert" seems to think Courier is installed: 

      robertm@sys76:~$ convert -list font |grep -i courier
  Font: Courier
    family: Courier
  Font: Courier-Bold
    family: Courier
  Font: Courier-BoldOblique
    family: Courier
  Font: Courier-Oblique
    family: Courier
  Font: Courier-10-Pitch-Bold
    family: Courier 10 Pitch
  Font: Courier-10-Pitch-Bold-Italic
    family: Courier 10 Pitch
  Font: Courier-10-Pitch-Italic
    family: Courier 10 Pitch
  Font: Courier-10-Pitch-Regular
    family: Courier 10 Pitch
robertm@sys76:~$

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      And here is the weird thing. When I used PDF::Create in a similar script all four versions of Courier are rendered perfectly. So PDF::Create is the obvious solution to this particular issue. I just wish I could figure out my problem with PDF::API2. It's starting to feel like a pernicious permissions problem, or similar. Puzzling.

      Thanks again, Robert M.

[reply]
[d/l]

        I checked the source, and the $pdf->corefont() method pulls from 14 built-in fonts in the module itself...where their data is encoded in .pm files, here:

        /the_module_install_dir/lib/PDF/API2/Resource/Font/

        So, it's not looking at system installed fonts at all.Your issue is within the module itself.

        Since your code is working for others, I would guess you've got a borked installation of the module. You could find try the ttffont() or psfont() method instead, assuming you have ttf or pfm files for the desired fonts around. The convert utility shows the location of these. Or perhaps try reinstalling the module?

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