Asian language PDF display issue in Crystal Reports for VS2008

Question

Here is the context: we use Crystal Reports for Visual Studio 2008 in a ASP.Net application to generate reports which may contain East Asian characters (Chinese, Japanese) in the text entered by the users. The reports are correctly generated on a Windows Server 2003 and incorrectly on Windows Server 2008.

When we first had this issue, we found that we needed to:

• install "East Asian language support" on the server
• use a Unicode font in CR: Arial Unicode MS
• install this font on the server

With these changes, the reports were correctly generated on WS2003. Now, we are moving to Windows Server 2008 x64 and we experience the same issue : chinese or japanese text are not correctly displayed (we have little squares instead).

We did not changed the reports (we installed the same application version). On the server WS2008, we installed (to test) the Chinese language pack (which should be the equivalent of the opration done on WS2003).

Does anyone have an idea of what might be the cause, or what to do next?

Answer 1

We finally found the solution.

Under Windows Server 2008, some fonts are hidden. The fact is: if a font is installed but hidden, you cannot use it... Moreover, "show" or "hide" a font is user dependent...

What we did on WS 2008 was:

• install the Arial Unicode MS font
• show the font for the user that runs the ASP.Net application (the identity of the AppPool)

Installation of language packs is not required. Just "enable" the font used in the reports.

The only thing that upset me is: how do we do that (enable the font) if we cannot connect on the server as the user of the AppPool?