[reportlab-users] Re: Using UTF-8 strings with ReportLab.

[Andy Robinson]

Jorge Godoy wrote:
> I've found a message from August 2004 saying that Platypus doesn't support
> UTF-8 but that it was being integrated into ReportLab...  There isn't any way
> to achieve that? 
> 

We have a branch in our repository which runs cleanly with Unicode and 
UTF8 in most everyday respects.  You can browse to this easily but
it's not advertised.  However, it's missing some key things:
we need to update our Asian font support to work with the big ttf/otf
fonts shipped by MS, Apple and Adobe and make that work there;
sort out Japanese paragraph wrapping (no spaces between words); and 
update our bitmap renderer to display non-European text in charts etc.

The good news is that we signed a project today which commits us
to delivering good quality Japanese output in Q1, which in turn
means we will probably make it the trunk, finish this off, and
call it "Version 2.0" via a series of alpha and beta releases
in Jan/Feb/Mar.  The work needed is not large and it will be a major
focus for Robin Becker and myself.  We also have a native Chinese
speaker on staff, Cliff Xuan, who can make sure we get Chinese output
right.

In the holiday period we will be overhauling our server and getting a 
Wiki in place, and I hope to kick this off in earnest by mid Jan. But
unless people are very keen, you'll need a couple of pages of notes
about what it does and doesn't do, which I hope to write next week.



Best Regards,


Andy Robinson