TL;DR

Some notes on selecting the right font in PDF::Builder.

I hope I didn’t already write about this, but anyway repetita iuvant 🙄

Using a font in PDF::Builder requires that the library can get to the font somehow. This can be through (at least) two ways:

• setting the path (relative or absolute) in the string for requesting the font, OR
• making sure the font is in a known directory.

Let’s get to the examples, starting from this:

use PDF::Builder;
my $pdf = PDF::Builder->new;

The first way is:

# somefont.ttf is in /path/to/
my $font_1 = $pdf->font('/path/to/somefont.ttf');

It’s possible to see which directories are pre-defined in PDF::Builder:

print "$_\n" for PDF::Builder->font_path;

If /path/to is already there, yay! Otherwise, we can add it:

PDF::Builder::add_to_font_path('/path/to');

When the directory is there, we can just pass the base name of the file:

# somefont.ttf is in /path/to/
my $font_2 = $pdf->font('somefont.ttf');

The current directory is included in the list by default, which is why relative paths work and copying the file locally works too.

As a matter of fact, relative paths work taking any directory in the list as a base. So this would work too:

# somefont.ttf is in /path/to/
PDF::Builder::add_to_font_path('/path');
my $font_3 = $pdf->font('to/somefont.ttf');

I hope future me will remember about this!

Stay safe folks!