Printing issue with Hindi Unicode on Windows and Ubuntu both

Question

I am working with Hindi Text on pdf. Though Hindi text is generating but its showing as misplaced matras. Suppose I have word like 'ज़िन्दगी' but its showing as

If I copy this text and paste on Libre Office Writer then it prints correct. I have tried nearly two fonts with tcpdf. Arial Unicode MS as well as Lohit_hi

$tcpdf->SetFont('arialuni', 'B', 15, 'false');
$html = nl2br($result['Song']['hindi']);
$tcpdf->writeHTMLCell(0, 20, 20, 25, $html);

Why its showing character but misplaced their position.

Answer 1

If I copy and paste 'ज़िन्दगी' into microsoft word, by default, it shows like this:

It's actually the exact same string of unicode characters (that is, a िन followed by a virama, followed by a द), but it's just rendered in different ways, depending on the font. Unicode fonts have complex logic for deciding when to substitute a certain string of characters for a different glyph, and the font being used by your PDF doesn't support the particular substitution you want.

You just have to find a font that does support that substitution, and make sure that your PDF is using that font. (It might be the case that your current setFont call isn't working correctly, or the font you specify isn't available at the time you set it, so it uses the system's default font for hindi characters, which doesn't support the substitution you're referring to).

Answer 2

Why aren't you using writeHTML() instead of writeHTMLCell() ? Your problem correlates obviously with the cell. Looks a like the line height is wrong or even there is the CSS attribute for background repeat is set (should be background-repeat:none; ). writeHTML() would prevent this.