# German letter ä, ö, ü in rfpdf

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/german-letter-a-a-a-in-rfpdf/158781>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [January 27, 2009, 9:53pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/german-letter-a-a-a-in-rfpdf/158781 "2009-01-27T21:53:04Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 7\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![adammontgomery](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/ce7236/32.png) [@adammontgomery](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/adammontgomery)\
**Post date:** [January 27, 2009, 9:53pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/german-letter-a-a-a-in-rfpdf/158781/1 "2009-01-27T21:53:04Z")

</div>

Hi,

I need PDF creation in Rails and decided for RFPDF.  
Everything works quite nice the only problem is that I can’t display  
ä,ö,ü in the pdf documents.

I found a tutorial that says that I have to create a font config file  
with MakeFont.

I did it, but now I don’t now where to put al this files.

Does anyone has experience with creating PDFs in Rails with ä,ü,ö  
letters?

Thx

Adam

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![adammontgomery](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/ce7236/32.png) [@adammontgomery](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/adammontgomery)\
**Post date:** [January 27, 2009, 9:58pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/german-letter-a-a-a-in-rfpdf/158781/2 "2009-01-27T21:58:10Z")

</div>

Hi Adam,

have a look at Prawn ([http://prawn.majesticseacreature.com/](http://prawn.majesticseacreature.com/)) and Prawnto  
(  
[http://www.cracklabs.com/prawnto](http://www.cracklabs.com/prawnto)).  
Works great for me…

Regards  
Nicolai

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![adammontgomery](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/ce7236/32.png) [@adammontgomery](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/adammontgomery)\
**Post date:** [April 15, 2009, 8:59am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/german-letter-a-a-a-in-rfpdf/158781/3 "2009-04-15T08:59:51Z")

</div>

Hi all,  
anyone found any solution for German letter ä, ö, ü in rf pdf  
i’m facing same problem and i must have tto use PDF::Writer on linux.

Regards,

Salil

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![adammontgomery](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/ce7236/32.png) [@adammontgomery](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/adammontgomery)\
**Post date:** [April 15, 2009, 11:25am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/german-letter-a-a-a-in-rfpdf/158781/4 "2009-04-15T11:25:07Z")

</div>

Salil G. wrote:

> Hi all,  
> anyone found any solution for German letter ä, ö, ü in rf pdf  
> i’m facing same problem and i must have tto use PDF::Writer on linux.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Salil

Hi Salil,

I made use of the prawn plugin mentioned above. It is very easy and  
powerful.

Cheers

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![adammontgomery](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/ce7236/32.png) [@adammontgomery](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/adammontgomery)\
**Post date:** [April 15, 2009, 12:01pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/german-letter-a-a-a-in-rfpdf/158781/5 "2009-04-15T12:01:46Z")

</div>

> Hi Salil,
> 
> I made use of the prawn plugin mentioned above. It is very easy and  
> powerful.
> 
> Cheers

Hi Adam,  
Thanx.  
I try following code and it works fine for me.I test it only on linux  
though.

enc = Iconv.new(‘Windows-1252’, ‘UTF-8’)

pdf.select\_font(“Helvetica”)

@data=enc.iconv(“Persönlicher LS Vorhunden”)

table.data = [  
{“name” =\> @data, “race” =\> " "}  
]

then it display “Persönlicher LS Vorhunden” correctly.

Regards,

Salil

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![adammontgomery](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/ce7236/32.png) [@adammontgomery](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/adammontgomery)\
**Post date:** [April 15, 2009, 12:43pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/german-letter-a-a-a-in-rfpdf/158781/6 "2009-04-15T12:43:06Z")

</div>

MaD wrote:

> You might wanna change “Vorhunden” to “vorhanden” to make it German.

thanx. but I check it with google language tools and it translate  
correctly.  
neways that’s not an issue i just wanna print special characters like ä,  
ö, ü in rfpdfand fortunatelly for me it works.

Regards,

Salil

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![adammontgomery](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/ce7236/32.png) [@adammontgomery](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/adammontgomery)\
**Post date:** [April 15, 2009, 12:07pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/german-letter-a-a-a-in-rfpdf/158781/7 "2009-04-15T12:07:51Z")

</div>

You might wanna change “Vorhunden” to “vorhanden” to make it German.