Problem with printing a pdf with java PDFRenderer

Question

I'm running across a problem trying to print a crystal report in java where all of the text is being replaced with the little box characters. The report blob is stored in an Oracle database, and I can preview it using adobe reader and see that it is properly formed with actual text. This blob is passed to a java applet that uses the PDFRenderer to print it.

My theory is that the problem lies in the fact that the crystal reports that we generate use version 1.2 of PDF. There are also a number of jasper reports that are generated as version 1.4 and these print correctly - it's only the 1.2 pdfs that have this problem.

Does PDFRenderer not support printing this version or is there some additional steps I need to take to successfully print those?

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

It's very unlikely that you encounter an issue that's due to PDF version.

Especially with text content the PDF spec get's very complex and probability is high that crystal reports creates content that either

• relies on some strange encoding
• uses CID (multibyte) font techniques

and pdf renderer has a blind spot there.

You may try to play around with settings on the report side regarding the

• encoding
• font (Type1 / TrueType9)
• font embedding

and maybe you find an option better suited.

Answer 2

Does PDFRenderer display the PDFs if you use it as a viewer? PDFRenderer does not have support for later PDF versions (ie compressed objects) but 1.2 is fairly straight-forward.