Question

I recently updated jasperreport version from 3.5.2 to 4.0.2 and noticed a few changes about font management.

I now use the Font Extension mechanism described here.

Until now, we had to set a PDF font in iReport to specify the font to use. This is now replaced by the font extension mechanism for all new templates.

My question is about retro-compatibility, is there a way to produce the expected output with old templates with having to change all the PDF font option to a Familly-font ? In all my tests so far I could only get Arial which is the font set as default in jeasper properties.

Answer 1

Basically two things need to be verified:

1. That the required fonts are present in the classpath
2. That The template declares the font to use in the adapted way.

Templates prior 4.0 use the pdfFont field to specify the font to use. One alias was created for each variant (normal, bold, italic, bolditalic) matching a specific font.

Recent (>= 4.0) tempalte use the font name field. Variant can be enabled using the italic/bold checkboxes in iReport if the fonts support those modifiers. This field was not used in PDF rendering in jasperreport prior 4.0.

When migrating old templates, each field having a pdfFont set should be changed into a combinaison of font name + modifiers.