Dynamical load of standard fonts for pdf creation?

[Rotzbua]

Hi,

is it possible to add standard fonts dynamically for pdf creation? (Browser)

I tested following script but it does not work:

assetsLoader.registerFont({
    name: 'Courier',
    fileName: 'Courier',
    URL: 'assets/font/data/Courier.afm',
    styles: ['normal']
});

Error:

ERROR Error: "File '../font/data/Courier.afm' not found in virtual file system"

It seems that the standard font are only stored in pdfMake.rawFiles and not processed further on.

[blikblum]

Sorry for late response.
Standard fonts are working fine. See this project. Times is a standard font.

Are you using pdfmake-lite?

Can you share a small example that shows the fail?

[blikblum]

Probably you should be doing the following:

assetsLoader.load().then(() => {
        pdfMake.vfs = assetsLoader.vfs;
        pdfMake.fonts = assetsLoader.fonts;
        if (pdfMake.fs) {
          assetsLoader.rawFiles.forEach(file => {
            pdfMake.fs.writeFileSync(file.name, file.data);
          });
       }
})

You may be asking why:

• pdfmake expects that the vfs property be a buffer or a base64 encoded that is converted to a buffer, but pdfkit expects the standard font data to not be encoded
• by using pdfMake.fs.writeFileSync we bypass this conversion

[blikblum]

I released a new version and updated docs. Reopen if still having problems

[Rotzbua]

Standard fonts are working fine. See this project. Times is a standard font.

Sorry I did not get your example project working.

Are you using pdfmake-lite?

I used normal pdfmake but also tested with lite version. No difference.

pdfmake expects that the vfs property be a buffer or a base64 encoded that is converted to a buffer, but pdfkit expects the standard font data to not be encoded

I am sorry, I made a mistake 😿 . I forgot that I also made some (debugging style) changes in the pdfmake so my pr is wrong.

Thanks for your support. Nice to have a simple assetsLoader.configurePdfMake 👍 .

---

After some research I figured out that the main problem is that the virtual file system adapter for the browser does not implement all required functionalities.

pdfmake load the standard font by following code:

   STANDARD_FONTS = {
      "Courier": function() {
        return fs.readFileSync(__dirname + "/../font/data/Courier.afm", 'utf8');
      },

fs.readFileSync("path") returns a buffer while fs.readFileSync("path", 'utf8') returns a string.
But the browser adapter only implements fs.readFileSync("path") so it returns a buffer and the AFMFont.parse fails.

So a solution with only using vfs would be:

pdfmake-lite/src/browser-extensions/virtual-fs.js

VirtualFileSystem.prototype.readFileSync = function (filename, option) {
  filename = fixFilename(filename);
  var dataContent = this.dataSystem[filename];

  var dataContent = this.dataSystem[filename];
  if (typeof dataContent === 'string' && option === 'utf8')
    return dataContent;
    
  if (dataContent) {
     return new Buffer(dataContent, typeof dataContent === 'string' ? 'base64' : undefined);
  }
[...]
}

pdf-utils.js

  storeFileData(fileName, data, raw) {
    if (raw) {
      this.rawFiles.push({
        name: fileName,
        data: data
      });
      this.vfs[fileName] = data;
    } else {
      this.vfs[fileName] = data;
    }
  }

Best

[blikblum]

You can create a PR to pdfMake