Symptom
- In a WebI report, a column contains Japanese, Chinese and Cambodian characters in different rows.
- If we assign 'Arial' font on this column, the Japanese, Chinese and Cambodian characters are displayed correctly in Web mode but show up as square boxes in Java mode and PDF output.
- If we assign 'Arial Unicode MS' font, the Japanese and Chinese charaters are displayed correctly in Web, Java mode and PDF ouput. However, the Cambodian characters are not displayed.
- If we save the report to Excel, the Japanese, Chinese and Cambodian characters are displayed correctly.
Environment
- SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform 4.x
- Web Intelligence
Reproducing the Issue
- Create a WebI report having a column that contains Japanese, Chinese and Cambodian characters in different rows.
- If we assign "Arial" font on this column, here are the results-
- Web mode - Japanese, Chinese and Cambodian characters displayed correctly
- Java mode - Japanese, Chinese and Cambodian characters NOT displayed correctly
- Excel output - Japanese, Chinese and Cambodian characters displayed correctly
- PDF output - Japanese, Chinese and Cambodian characters NOT displayed correctly
- If we assign "Arial Unicode MS" font on this column, here are the results-
- Web mode - Japanese, Chinese and Cambodian characters displayed correctly
- Java mode - Japanese and Chinese characters displayed correctly but not Cambodian characters.
- Excel output - Japanese, Chinese and Cambodian characters displayed correctly
- PDF output - Japanese and Chinese characters displayed correctly but not Cambodian characters.
Cause
- Arial and Arial Unicode MS fonts are not capable to displaying Cambodian characters.
- All characters are displayed correctly in Web mode and Excel ouput because the Browser and Excel use fallback fonts to display different language characters.
- To display Cambodian characters, the browser and Excel internally pick-up "Khmer UI" font as the fallback font.
- It is possible to modify the fontalias.xml file and add Khmer UI font which will display the Cambodian characters correctly in WebI as well as PDF. However, this font is not capable to displaying Chinese/Japanese characters.
- As per the current design of WebI, we can assign only one font to a column. This is the expected behavior.
Resolution
- To display Cambodian language, install Khmer UI font and add the following entries in the fontalias.xml files-
<FONT NAME="Khmer UI">
<FONTFAMILY PLATFORM="ttf" NAME="Khmer UI">
<FONTATTRIBUTE BOLD="false" ITALIC="false" LOGICAL="Khmer UI" PHYSICAL="KhmerUI.ttf"/>
</FONTFAMILY>
<FONTFAMILY PLATFORM="win" NAME="Khmer UI"/>
<FONTFAMILY PLATFORM="java" NAME="Khmer UI"/>
<FONTFAMILY PLATFORM="html" NAME="Khmer UI"/>
</FONT>
- There is no direct solution for this issue if a column contains Cambodian as well as other language characters.
- A workaround in this situation is to Save the WebI report to Excel and then Save the Excel document to PDF.
To request a new feature or product enhancement, SAP has defined a new process and tool that is now available to customers called Customer Influence: https://www.sap.com/about/customer-involvement/influence-adopt.html . Customer Influence gives customers the ability to log their own Enhancement Requests and work more directly with our Technology and Development group.
SAP is committed to reviewing and responding to the ideas submitted on a regular basis. The ideas with the most votes will receive a higher level of attention for response and consideration. The processes and procedures associated with this site will continue to evolve and enhance over time. Refer to Knowledge Base Article 1515837 for more details.
See Also
Keywords
Cambodian, Japanese, Chinese, Unicode, characters, square boxes , KBA , BI-RA-WBI , Web Intelligence , Problem