PDFlib 8 Windows COM/.NET Tutorial

Examples:
&linefeed;
&hortab;
‌
U+000A linefeed control character
U+0009 horizontal tab
U+200C ZERO WIDTH NON-JOINER
Glyph name references. Glyph names are drawn from the following sources:
> Common glyph names will be searched in an internal list
> Font-specific glyph names are searched in the current font. Character references of
this class work only with content strings since they always require a font.
In order to identify glyph name references the actual name requires a period character
’.’ after the ampersand character ’&’. Examples:
&.three; U+0033 common glyph name for the digit 3
&.mapleleaf; (PUA unicode value) custom glyph name from Carta font
&.T.swash;
(PUA unicode value) second period character is part of the glyph name
Character references with glyph names are useful in the following scenarios:
> Character references with font-specific glyph names are useful in contents strings to
select alternate character forms (e.g. swash characters) and glyphs without any specific
Unicode semantics (symbols, icons, and ornaments). Note that tabular figures
and many other features are more easily implemented with OpenType features (see
Section 6.3, »OpenType Layout Features«, page 158).
> Names from the Adobe Glyph List (including the uniXXXX and u1XXXX forms) plus
certain common »misnamed« glyph names will always be accepted for content
strings and hypertext strings.
Byte value references. Numerical values can also be supplied in character references
which may be useful for addressing the glyphs in a symbol font. This variant requires
an additional hash character ’#’ and a decimal or hexadecimal number, where hexadecimal
numbers are introduced with a lower- or uppercase ’X’ character. Example (assuming
the Wingdings font):
&.#x9F;
&.#159;
bullet symbol in Wingdings font
bullet symbol in Wingdings font
Using character references. Character references will not be substituted by default;
you must explicitly set the charref parameter or option to true in order to use character
references in content strings, for example:
p.set_parameter("charref", "true");
font = p.load_font("Helvetica", "winansi", "");
if (font == -1) { ... }
p.setfont(font, 24);
p.show_xy("Price: 500€", 50, 500);
Additional notes on using character references:
> Character references can be used in all content strings, hypertext strings, and name
strings. As an exception, font-specific glyph name references work only with contents
strings as noted above.
> Character references are not substituted in text with builtin encoding. However, you
can use character references for symbolic fonts by using unicode encoding.
110 Chapter 4: Unicode and Legacy Encodings (Edition for COM, .NET, and REALbasic)