Adding fonts to Python's ReportLab Module

I have been experimenting with the ReportLab module for Python and have been suitably impressed thus far. One thing that I found restrictive however was the default number of fonts available. To that end I worked on trying to figure out how to add more font options. I should qualify at the outset that I am working in a Windows environment with the pythonxy IDE using ReportLab version 2.6. You can find instructions for how to do this in both the user guide (download here) and in their FAQ. I really like the "Computer Modern" typeface found in TeX so this example tries to register these fonts to ReportLab.

The first thing I needed to do was to get my hands on the font files. You can find lots of open source fonts here: http://mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/CTAN/fonts/. I got what I believe to be the Computer Modern fonts from here: http://mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/CTAN/fonts/amsfonts.zip. This zip file contains two folders of interest:

1. afm (Adobe Font Metrics)
2. pfb (Printer Font Binary)

From what I gather in the documentation, both are required to load into ReportLab. My next step was to simply load all the fonts found in these folders. Each font needs both a afm and pfb file. I setup my script to open both folders, find the filename common in both (ex. cmb10.afm and cmb10.pfb), and register those fonts (see code below).

import os
from reportlab.pdfbase import pdfmetrics

afmdir = 'path to afm files'
pfbdir = 'path to pfb files'
afmfiles = os.listdir(afmdir)
pfbfiles = os.listdir(pfbdir)
for j in xrange(len(afmfiles)):
    afmfiles[j] = os.path.splitext(afmfiles[j])[0]
for j in xrange(len(pfbfiles)):
    pfbfiles[j] = os.path.splitext(pfbfiles[j])[0]
afmfiles = set(afmfiles)
pfbfiles = set(pfbfiles)
commonfiles = afmfiles.intersection(pfbfiles)
fontnames = []
for afmfile in commonfiles:
    filename = afmdir + afmfile + '.afm'
    f = open(filename, 'r')
    try:
        f.readline()
        f.readline()
        line = f.readline().rstrip()
        fontnames.append(line[9:])
    finally:
        f.close()
for j, ffile in enumerate(commonfiles):
    afmfile = afmdir+ffile+'.afm'
    pfbfile = pfbdir+ffile+'.pfb'
    pdfmetrics.registerTypeFace(pdfmetrics.EmbeddedType1Face(afmfile, pfbfile))
    pdfmetrics.registerFont(pdfmetrics.Font(fontnames[j], fontnames[j], 'WinAnsiEncoding'))
    
print pdfmetrics.getRegisteredFontNames()

A couple of points to note:

1. To register the font you need to give it the fontname. This is found directly in the afm file (3rd line).
2. I am using the 'WinAnsiEncoding' which means not all the fonts loaded will be usable.

To make use of all these new fonts and see how they looked I ran the following script to create a table in a PDF document with all the fonts displayed (because of the WinAnsiEncoding not all fonts will work and will just show a blank).

from reportlab.lib.pagesizes import letter
from reportlab.lib.styles import ParagraphStyle, getSampleStyleSheet
from reportlab.platypus import BaseDocTemplate, Frame, PageTemplate, Image, Table, TableStyle, Spacer, PageBreak
from reportlab.platypus.doctemplate import _doNothing
from reportlab.lib.units import inch
import reportlab.lib.colors as colors
import defs
import locale
locale.setlocale(locale.LC_ALL, 'English_Canada.1252')
registeredFonts = defs.registerAMSfonts()

PDF_VIEWER = 'C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Adobe\\Reader 10.0\\Reader\\AcroRd32.exe'
PDF_FILENAME = 'C:\\Users\\Joel\\Documents\\Python\\ReportLab\\rev3\\TestFonts.pdf'

elements = []

doc = BaseDocTemplate('TestFonts.pdf', pagesize=letter)
f0 = Frame(doc.leftMargin, doc.bottomMargin, doc.width, doc.height, id=None, showBoundary=0)
template = PageTemplate(id='test', frames=[f0], onPageEnd=_doNothing)
doc.addPageTemplates([template])

val1 = locale.format('%9.2f', -15197114.48, grouping=True)
val2 = locale.format('%9.2f', -16790937.16, grouping=True)

data = [['Index', 'Value 1', 'Value 2', 'FontName']]
for j in range(len(registeredFonts)):
    data.append(['%d'%j, val1, val2, registeredFonts[j]])
tablestyle = TableStyle([
    ('ALIGNMENT',(0,0),(-1,-1), 'RIGHT'),
    ('FONTSIZE', (0,0),(-1,-1), 10),
    ('VALIGN',   (0,0),(-1,-1), 'BOTTOM'),
    ('INNERGRID',(0,0),(-1,-1), 0.25, colors.black),
    ('BOX',      (0,0),(-1,-1), 0.5, colors.black)])
for j in xrange(len(registeredFonts)):
    tablestyle.add('FONTNAME',(0,j),(3,j),registeredFonts[j])
table1 = Table(data,
               colWidths=doc.width/4.0,
               rowHeights=18,
               style=tablestyle)
elements.append(table1)
elements.append(PageBreak())
doc.build(elements)

import subprocess
process = subprocess.Popen([PDF_VIEWER, '/A', 'view=FitH', PDF_FILENAME], shell=False, stdout=subprocess.PIPE)
process.wait()

I am using the "subprocess" command to have Python automatically launch Adobe's Acrobat Reader to view my newly created document. The results look something like this: