Hello Anonymous Monk,

One possible way could be with HTML::Entities.

Sample of code:

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use HTML::Entities;
use open ':std', ':encoding(UTF-8)';

my $html = "Character one: ω character two: ∞";
print decode_entities($html), "\n";

__END__

$ perl test.pl
Character one: ω character two: ∞

Update: Adding complete answer. Sample of code from PDF::API2 / unicode characters. The solution to your problem is to add the appropriate font method. From the documentation PDF::API2/FONT_METHODS:

FONT METHODS
@directories = PDF::API2::addFontDirs($dir1, $dir2, ...)
Adds one or more directories to the search path for finding font files
+.

Returns the list of searched directories.

$font = $pdf->corefont($fontname, [%options])
Returns a new Adobe core font object.
[download]

In my sample of code I only use one but if you follow the documentation you can add more. I downloaded the fonts from Fonts by DejaVu Fonts.

Sample of working code:

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use PDF::API2;
use HTML::Entities;

# Create a blank PDF file
my $pdf = PDF::API2->new();

# Add a blank page
my $page = $pdf->page();

my $font = $pdf->ttfont('DejaVuSans.ttf');

# Add some text to the page
my $text = $page->text();

$text->font($font, 20);
$text->translate(80, 710);

my $html = "Character one: ω character two: &#8734";
my $decoded_string = decode_entities($html);
$text->text($decoded_string);

# Save the PDF
$pdf->saveas('test.pdf');
[download]

Let us know if this works for you. BR / Thanos.