Using Fonts

When using PDF output, with the exception of Adobe’s Base 14 (Type 1) fonts, all other truetype fonts are subset and embedded into the PDF.

BI Publisher is configured by default to use the fonts directory <PS_HOME>\fonts\truetype, for any of its pre-defined truetype fonts. This includes the Albany WT set of fonts, which is the default fallback font used for foreign language character support, as well as for other special characters such as bullet points, check box glyphs, and so on.

In previous releases of PeopleTools, BI Publisher required these predefined fonts to exist under the active JRE’s lib\fonts folder, for example, <PS_HOME>\jre\lib\fonts. This is no longer required, and BI Publisher is configured to access the fonts directly from the fonts directory.

See Fusion Middleware Report Designer's guide for Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher, “Setting Report Processing and Output Document Properties”, “Define Font Mappings”, “Predefined Fonts,” for a list of all BI Publisher pre-defined Type 1 and truetype fonts.

The default BI Publisher font location can be modified by changing the value of the JVM system property XDO_FONT_DIR specified in the JavaVM Options setting in both the App Server and Process Scheduler configuration files.

This is a sample configuration file with custom font location:

psappsrv.cfg/psprcs.cfg:
…
 [PSTOOLS]
…
JavaVM Options=-Dxdo.ConfigFile=%PS_HOME%/appserv/xdo.cfg -DXDO_FONT_DIR=%PS_HOME%/fonts/truetype -Xms32m -Xmx128m
…

When using a custom font location other than the default, ensure to copy all delivered ttf fonts from the default fonts folder into the custom font location so that the BI Publisher functionality is not affected.

To use fonts other than those that are pre-defined, you need to create a font mapping in the fonts section of the xdo.cfg file.

See Defining System Properties, for details on xdo.cfg file.

This is an example of font mapping syntax for RTF templates:

<config version="1.0.0" xmlns="http://xmlns.oracle.com/oxp/config/">
    <properties>
        <!-- System level properties -->
        <property name="xslt-xdoparser">true</property> 
	…
    </properties>
    <fonts>
        <font family="Arial" style="normal" weight="normal">
            <truetype path="C:\Windows\fonts\arial.ttf" />
        </font>
	<font family="Arial" style="normal" weight="bold">
            <truetype path="C:\Windows\fonts\arialbd.ttf" />
        </font>
    </fonts>
</config>

This is an example of font substitution syntax for PDF templates:

<config version="1.0.0" xmlns="http://xmlns.oracle.com/oxp/config/">
    <properties>
        <!-- System level properties -->
        <property name="xslt-xdoparser">true</property> 
	…
    </properties>
    <fonts>
        <font-substitute name="Helvetica">
           <truetype path="C:\Windows\fonts\calibri.ttf" ttccno="0" />
        </font-substitute>
    </fonts>
</config>

See Oracle Fusion Middleware Administrator's Guide for Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher, “Appendix C Configuration File Reference”, “Font Definitions,” for additional details on the font mapping syntax.