Add fonts for embedding

Additional fonts can be included in Moodle and used by the Custom certificate module (mod_customcert), embedding them in the PDF.

Before adding custom TCPDF fonts

The default location for fonts that are included with TCPDF is lib/tcpdf/fonts/. If PDF_CUSTOM_FONT_PATH exists, this directory will be used instead of lib/tcpdf/fonts/, the default location is $CFG->dataroot.'/fonts/'.

If you are adding custom fonts you need to copy all fonts from lib/tcpdf/fonts/ to your PDF_CUSTOM_FONT_PATH and then add the extra fonts. Alternatively you may download all TCPDF fonts from http://www.tcpdf.org/download.php and extract them to PDF_CUSTOM_FONT_PATH directory.

From /lib/tcpdf/fonts/readme_moodle.txt:

This directory contains just selected set of original tcpdf fonts in order to keep the standard Moodle distribution lightweight. You may want to manually download tcpdf package and extract its fonts/ directory into your $CFG->dataroot/fonts/. In such case, pdflib.php will use this directory. In the future, we plan to have fonts downloadable in a same way as languages are. (TODO MDL-18663).

Add a font from TTF file

Assuming you have a font licensed for converting and embedding...

Using the "TCPDF Fonts" plugin

Released November 15, 2021, the TCPDF Fonts plugin allows for easily switching to the custom TCPDF font directory (dataroot/fonts) and maintaining custom TCPDF fonts. It accepts .ttf, .otf, or .zip files.

Using an online converter

You can upload TTF (or OTF) fonts to http://fonts.palettize.me/ or https://www.xml-convert.com/en/convert-tff-font-to-afm-pfa-fpdf-tcpdf, and download converted versions.

Fonts created this way seem to handle accented characters better than converting locally.

Converting locally

Fonts created this way may not handle accented characters correctly; this is probably dependent on the specific software versions. If you encounter this problem, you might want to try using an online converter (above).

1. Copy the .ttf file to /lib/tcpdf/fonts

2. Create a "convertfont.php" file in /lib/tcpdf/fonts (and ensure the web server has permissions to run it), containing:

<?php
include('../tcpdf.php');
$pdf = new TCPDF_FONTS('P', 'mm', 'A4', true, 'UTF-8', false);
$pdf->addTTFfont('./MyFont.ttf', 'TrueTypeUnicode');

Change MyFont.ttf to the name of the .ttf file you copied to the folder.

3. View the file at http://hostname/lib/tcpdf/fonts/convertfont.php (it should just show a blank page).

4. Verify that new files have been created in /lib/tcpdf/fonts:

myfont.ctg.z
myfont.php
myfont.z

If that did not work, make sure you changed the .ttf filename in "convertfont.php" and then purge all caches (http://hostname/admin/purgecaches.php) and try again.

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