How to use external fonts in PDF reports

Products

• Security Information Manager

Issue/Introduction

After creating a report and exporting it to PDF some of the characters in the report can't be read anymore.

In the Preview of the SSIM Client the report looks fine.

 

Cause

In the Preview the external font of the Client machine is used. To use an external font in the PDF report a ttf (True Type Font) font file must be copied to the SSIM.

Resolution

Steps to be performed on the SSIM appliance

1. Connect to the SSIM appliance via SSH and run the following commands.

cd /usr/share/fonts

     

mkdir Fonts

 

2. Copy the appropiate .ttf file for your font to the directory /usr/share/fonts/Fonts/ on the SSIM.

 

3. From the ssh console as root restart the service schedulersvc.

service schedulersvc restart

 

Steps to be performed on the Windows machine that SSIM client is installed/run

 1. Copy the appropiate .ttf file for your font to the directory C:\Windows\Fonts

 2. Reload SSIM client 

 3. In the report settings for the font set the PDF Font Name to "External TTF font ..." and the PDF Encoding according to your needs.

For example:

 

 

Be aware that most True Type Fonts are copyright protected. You will either have to purchase them or download free fonts.

Applies To

This  happens when using DBCS (Double Byte Charater Set) cheracters in reports. This is most likely the case when using languages which don't use the standard alphabet (for example: arabic, hebrew, cyrillic, etc)