Does xslt-fo not support utf-8?

Question

I have an xml file in utf-8 with an encoding attribute.

When I execute fop -xml xml.xml -xsl xsl.xsl -pdf pdf.pdf, my output pdf has broken utf-8 characters. What is important, the text from xsl file is without utf-8 characters, same as the text from xml.

Utf-8 characters are replaced by #.

What could be wrong?

Xsl file:

    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" xmlns:fo="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Format" xmlns:java="http://xml.apache.org/xslt/java" exclude-result-prefixes="java" version="1.0" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<xsl:output method="xml" version="1.0" indent="yes" encoding="UTF-8" />

<xsl:template match="/">
    <fo:root xmlns:fo="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Format">

        <fo:layout-master-set>
          <fo:simple-page-master master-name="A4" margin="1cm">
            <fo:region-body  margin="2cm" margin-left="1cm" margin-right="1cm"/>
            <fo:region-before extent="3cm"/>
            <fo:region-after extent="5mm"/>
          </fo:simple-page-master>
        </fo:layout-master-set>

        <fo:page-sequence master-reference="A4">
            <fo:static-content flow-name="xsl-region-before">
                <fo:block font-size="24pt" font-family="Calibri">Filmoteka</fo:block>
            </fo:static-content>
            <fo:static-content flow-name="xsl-region-after">
                <fo:block font-size="10pt" font-family="Calibri">Wygenerowano: <xsl:call-template name="dataCzas" /></fo:block>
            </fo:static-content>

            <fo:flow flow-name="xsl-region-body">
                <fo:block font-size="12pt" font-family="Calibri" padding-after="1cm">
                    <fo:table table-layout="fixed" width="100%" border="solid black 1px">
                    <fo:table-column column-width="8mm"/>
                    <fo:table-column column-width="40mm"/>
                    <fo:table-column column-width="40mm"/>
                    <fo:table-column column-width="13mm"/>
                    <fo:table-column column-width="65mm"/>
                        <fo:table-header>
                            <fo:table-row>
                                <fo:table-cell border="solid black 2px">
                                    <fo:block font-weight="bold" background-color="#cccccc">Lp.</fo:block>
                                </fo:table-cell>
                                <fo:table-cell border="solid black 2px">
                                    <fo:block font-weight="bold" background-color="#cccccc">Tytuł PL</fo:block>
                                </fo:table-cell>
                                <fo:table-cell border="solid black 2px">
                                    <fo:block font-weight="bold" background-color="#cccccc">Reżyseria</fo:block>
                                </fo:table-cell>
                                <fo:table-cell border="solid black 2px">
                                    <fo:block font-weight="bold" background-color="#cccccc">Rok</fo:block>
                                </fo:table-cell>
                                <fo:table-cell border="solid black 2px">
                                    <fo:block font-weight="bold" background-color="#cccccc">Obsada</fo:block>
                                </fo:table-cell>
                            </fo:table-row>
                        </fo:table-header>
                        <fo:table-body>
                            <xsl:apply-templates />
                        </fo:table-body>
                    </fo:table>
                </fo:block>
            </fo:flow>



        </fo:page-sequence>

    </fo:root>
</xsl:template>


<xsl:template match="film">
    <fo:table-row>
        <fo:table-cell border="solid black 1px">
            <fo:block><xsl:number format="1"/></fo:block>
        </fo:table-cell>
        <fo:table-cell border="solid black 1px">
            <fo:block font-family="Calibri"><xsl:value-of select="tytul_pol"/></fo:block>
        </fo:table-cell>
        <fo:table-cell border="solid black 1px">
            <fo:block font-family="Calibri"><xsl:value-of select="rezyser"/></fo:block>
        </fo:table-cell>
        <fo:table-cell border="solid black 1px">
            <fo:block font-family="Calibri"><xsl:value-of select="rok"/></fo:block>
        </fo:table-cell>
        <fo:table-cell border="solid black 1px">
            <fo:block font-family="Calibri"><xsl:value-of select="obsada"/></fo:block>
        </fo:table-cell>
    </fo:table-row>
</xsl:template>

<xsl:template name="dataCzas">
    <xsl:value-of select="java:format(java:java.text.SimpleDateFormat.new('dd MMMM yyyy, HH:mm:ss'), java:java.util.Date.new())"/>
</xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>

xml file:

http://pastebin.com/fr9fChtn

Answer 1

If FOP outputs characters as #, the selected font does not include a glyph to represent them.

This is presumably because your XML input file contains lines like:

<kraj>Francja, USA, Włochy</kraj>

The problematic character here is ł.

So, to answer your question: FOP does support UTF-8, it is just that the font (in your case: font-family='Calibri') does not have a means to represent the characters.

If this indeed the case, FOP should output a warning along the lines of

WARNING: Glyph for "ł" not available in font "DejaVuSans"

---

Now, in order to also account for those characters not present in whatever font you have chosen, either change the output font alltogether or, as a workaround, isolate them with inlines.

For instance, this is how you make sure that for the character Σ (a mathematical operator), the right font is selected:

<fo:block> 
    <fo:inline font-family='Symbol'>Σ</fo:inline>
</fo:block>

See this page for more info on fonts with FOP: http://xmlgraphics.apache.org/fop/trunk/fonts.html .

Answer 2

The solution might be much simpler. In our case we got warnings for missing glyphs, read the FOP font configuration web page and just added

encoding-mode="single-byte"

to the Calibri font definition to embedd the full font. This solved the issue for us (with FOP 2.0).