[reportlab-users] black squares for every newline

[Andy Robinson]

dimitri pater wrote:

> Hi,

> 

> when I do this (snippet):

> 

> bodytext=open('sampletext.txt','r').readlines()

> 

> for line in bodytext:

> textobject.textLine(line)

> c.drawText(textobject)

> 

> I use ("Helvetica",12) as the argument for setFont

> 

> There are black squares for every newline in the PDF. The sampletext.txt 

> file is saved as a UTF-8 file.

> 

> I am still new to reportlab (two days now), so I could use some help ;-) 

> I did not find answers to my question on the web.


Your method of parsing the file has resulted in every line having a 
newline character at the end.  This is not a valid glyph in the font
so you get a nasty blob. Try stripping the whitespace from the line 
before printing it e.g.

 > for line in bodytext:
 >     textobject.textLine(line.strip())
 >     c.drawText(textobject)


HTH

- Andy