Unicode in PDF

Question

My program generates relatively simple PDF documents on request, but I\'m having trouble with unicode characters, like kanji or odd math symbols. To write a normal string in

Answer 1

Algoman's answer is wrong in many things. You can make a PDF document with Unicode in it and it's not rocket science, though it needs some work. Yes he is right, to use more than 255 characters in one font you have to create a composite font (CIDFont) pdf object. Then you just mention the actual TrueType font you want to use as a DescendatFont entry of CIDFont. The trick is that after that you have to use glyph indices of a font instead of character codes. To get this indices map you have to parse cmap section of a font - get contents of the font with GetFontData function and take hands on TTF specification. And that's it! I've just did it and now I have a Unicode PDF!

Sample Code for parsing cmap section is here: https://web.archive.org/web/20150329005245/http://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/241020

And yes, don't forget /ToUnicode entry as @user2373071 pointed out or user will not be able to search your PDF or copy text from it.