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user5473535
user5473535

Reputation: 31

Merging xfdf into template pdf without losing some special characters (eg. ő,Ű,č)

I have an xfdf file, which is utf8 and may contain non ASCII characters. I would like to merge it with the pdf that contains the form. I tried with pdftk, and although merging happens correctly - in terms of all fields are being populated - some characters are not appearing in the flattened pdf.

Taking the xfdf:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<xfdf xmlns="http://ns.adobe.com/xfdf/" xml:space="preserve">
    <fields>
        <field name="some_data">
            <value>Űző</value>
        </field>
        <field name="some_other_data">
            <value>ùûüÿ€’“”«»àâæçéèêëïôœÙÛÜŸÀÂÆÇÉÈÊËÏÎÔ</value>
        </field>
    </fields>
</xfdf>

The result pdf's fields have the following values (excluded the quotation marks):

So all the characters in some_other_data are stored correctly, but ő and Ű are stored as 00.

I also realized that if I uncompress the pdf with pdftk, I can find the original characters stored in the pdf as 

/DA (/Helv 8.64 Tf 0 g)
/Subtype /Widget
/V (ţ˙ Q z\r )
/T (some_data)

The fact that the correct characters are there is also clear if I open the unflattened form with Adobe Reader. After opening, initially the form field some_data contains only the letter z surrounded with spaces, BUT if I click on the form field, the special characters are revealed, and any changes made to the field value will result in the correct characters to stay visible. On the other hand if I unfocus the form field without any modification, they disappear again..

I also tried to use numeric entities in the xfdf, but it did not help either.

I have 2 questions:

  1. Why won't these characters appear in the value of the field when the pdf clearly contains the correct character information, and is also capable of rendering them?
  2. Most importantly what can I do in order to have the correct characters appearing in the pdf after flattening the form? I'd prefer a solution which does not require any postprocessing once the xfdf is merged into the pdf form, but any solutions or ideas are welcome.

Thank you all!

Upvotes: 2

Views: 222

Answers (0)

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