(mPDF ≥ 5.0 & < 6.0)
In mPDF there are a number of ways to configure your set-up. There is often a trade-off between file size,processing speed, appearance (support for different fonts), and reliability (i.e. ensuring that text is alwaysdisplayed, at least in some form).
Some of the things you can change are:
$mpdf = new mPDF('c')Some of the major considerations are:
PDF files have certain standard fonts: Arial/Helvetica, Times and Courier in the win-1252 character set, and Zapfdingbats and Symbol character sets. These fonts should be available to any PDF reading program, and do notneed to be embedded in the PDF document.
Advantages: Small file size, fast processing, small memory usage.
Disadvantages: Limited choice of fonts for appearance. Will not display characters which are not in thewin-1252 Symbols, or Dingbats codepages (suitable for most Western European languages).
To use core fonts only, usec for the initial parameter:
<?php$mpdf=newmPDF('c');The alternative (the default setup) uses TrueType Unicode fonts, and the only limitation of characters to displayis determined by the font files themselves.
Fonts with good coverage of all characters you may require can be very large. If you embed the whole font file inthe PDF document, the file can become very large - especially if you use a number of fonts. mPDF can embed subsetsof the fonts i.e. just including the characters used in the PDF document.
Advantages of subsetting: Manageable file size (typically between 20-200kB)
Disadvantages of subsetting: Increase in processing time and memory usage (not always), as mPDF has to rebuildfont files for each document.
By default, mPDF will embed subsets of fonts if less than 30% of the characters contained in the font are used inthe document; otherwise it will embed the whole font file. You can override this by changing the configurable variable$this->percentSubset
For backwards compatibility, you can use-s ors in the initial parameter to override theconfig.php settings and force subsetting of all fonts e.g.
<?php$mpdf=newmPDF('s');$mpdf=newmPDF('ar-s');// also defining arabic language code$mpdf=newmPDF('utf8-s');// for backwards compatibility - the utf-8 does nothingIf your document uses Unicode fonts as above, you can force mPDF to use the core (non-embedded) PDF fonts inparts of the document by selecting the fontnames:chelvetica,ccourier andctimes e.g.
<pstyle="font-family:chelvetica">This paragraph will use core fonts</p>You could force mPDF to always use core fonts when Arial/Helvetica/Courier are specified, by editing thefont translation variable$this->fonttrans inconfig_fonts.php e.g.:
<?php$this->fonttrans=array('arial'=>'chelvetica','helvetica'=>'chelvetica','timesnewroman'=>'ctimes','times'=>'ctimes','couriernew'=>'ccourier','courier'=>'ccourier',...Indic languages always require special handling(cf.Indic fonts).
Other than this, whether you need to do anything special is determined by the choice of fonts you use in the document,and whether they contain the necessary characters to display your text. The DejaVu fonts distributed with mPDF willusually display most Western and Eastern European languages, Cyrillic text, Baltic languages, Turkish, and Greek.
Languages which usually need special consideration are: CJK (chinese - japanese - korean) languages, Vietnamese,Thai, and Arabic languages. With these, you need to tell mPDF to select a suitable font.
There are a number of different ways to do this:
Write your HTML code to specify the exact fonts needed:
<pstyle="font-family: Garuda">เป็นมนุษย์สุดประเสริฐเลิศคุณค่า</p><pstyle="font-family: BIG5">仝娃阿哀愛挨姶</p><pstyle="font-family: sun-exta">仝娃阿哀愛挨姶</p><pstyle="font-family: 'XB Riyaz'">البرادعی البرادعی</p><pstyle="font-family: ind_hi_1_001">पहला पन्ना</p>Use thelang attribute to define the language. This causes mPDF to use a font as specified in theconfig_cp.php file. The current font-family will be used if it is availablein the list defined as$unifonts, otherwise the first font specified in the$unifonts list will be selected.
<plang="th">เป็นมนุษย์สุดประเสริฐเลิศคุณค่า</p><plang="zh-CN">仝娃阿哀愛挨姶</p><plang="ar">البرادعی البرادعی</p><plang="hi">पहला पन्ना</p>If you set the language in the initial call to mPDF i.e.
<?php$mpdf=newmPDF('th');$mpdf=newmPDF('zh-CN');// You can append +aCJK or -aCJK$mpdf=newmPDF('ar');$mpdf=newmPDF('hi');then mPDF will restrict the fonts you can use for the whole document.Any of the fonts defined in$unifonts can be used:
<?php// If config_cp.php defines:case"th":$spacing="C";$unifonts="garuda,garudaB,garudaI,garudaBI,norasi,norasiB,norasiI,norasiBI";break;These paragraphs will appear in Garuda (a sans-serif font) and Norasi (serif) respectively:
เป็นมนุษย์สุดประเสริฐเลิศคุณค่าเป็นมนุษย์สุดประเสริฐเลิศคุณค่าYou can also set the language for the whole document by setting:
<bodylang="th"><bodylang="zh-CN"><bodylang="ar"><bodylang="hi">Use SetAutoFont()to automatically detect these languages. AutoFont inspects the HTML code and inserts aspan element to marktext which is auto-detected e.g.
<?php$mpdf->SetAutoFont(AUTOFONT_ALL);This:
This is Thai text: เป็นมนุษย์สุดประเสริฐเลิศคุณค่าbecomes:
This is Thai text: <span lang="th">เป็นมนุษย์สุดประเสริฐเลิศคุณค่า</span>Thelang attribute means that mPDF will select a font as described above in method 2. You can also use CSS stylesheetsto apply additional styles e.g. changing the font-size.
Do not use AutoFont as well as methods (1) - (4)
Use$useSubstitutionsto use character susbstitution. mPDF will inspect every character in the HTML code, and if the character is notrepresented in the current font, it will try to substitute it from one of the fonts defined in$this->backupSubsFontinconfig_fonts.php.
<?php$this->backupSubsFont=array('dejavusanscondensed','norasi');Let us call Western and Eastern European languages, Cyrillic text, Baltic languages, Turkish, and Greek -common languages, and CJK and Indic languages, Vietnamese, Thai, and Arabic -special languages.
If you are authoring a document in a common language which contains sections of text using special languages,the ideal method to use is method (1) or (2)
If you are writing documents entirely in a special language, you should use method (3) or (4), but you will berestricted to selecting from the fonts defined inconfig_cp.php
If you are creating a PDF document from a page such as this web-page or a forum board which is likely to containsome special language text, and it is not possible to mark-up the special language text, you should use method (5) AutoFont.
If the document is mainly in a common language and may contain only occasional words or characters, the alternativeis to use method (6) character substitution. This will be slower than (5) if there are substantial sections in speciallanguages.
It is possible to use methods (5) and (6) together, to ensure that all special characters are displayed.
If you are using a multilingual website (Wiki?) which has document in different languages, but where each page willbe in only one language, and you have a common stylesheet etc. you can use method (3). Use the language code ('en-GB','zh-CN') from the website page selected to set up the mPDF class.
If you want to use core non-embedded fonts when possible (for Western European languages), you can add'-x' to thelanguage string. This will select core fonts only when the language string is appropriate (as defined inconfig_cp.php) e.g.
<?php$mpdf=newmPDF('en-GB-x');// will only use core non-embedded fonts$mpdf=newmPDF('de-x');// will only use core non-embedded fonts (German)$mpdf=newmPDF('ar-x');// behaves as though ('ar') called (Arabic)$mpdf=newmPDF('ru-x');// behaves as though ('ru') called (Russian)There is a useful list of language/country codes at:http://www.i18nguy.com/unicode/language-identifiers.html.