PDF knowledge base

PDF fonts and missing characters

A PDF can reference a font or embed font data. Embedding helps reproduce glyphs when the recipient does not have the original font installed.

Text and appearance are related

A page may display correctly yet copy badly if the text encoding or character mapping is incomplete. Conversely, extracted text can be readable while the source font has unusual appearance. Always check both the visible page and the copied text when converting documents.

What the formatters support

The text-generating tools bundle Latin and Devanagari fonts. They wrap long text and add pages rather than clipping the content. An unsupported character produces a clear error instead of silently dropping a name or replacing a symbol with an invented result.

Preserve the source for exact typography

A text reflow conversion does not reproduce the original font metrics, page layout or complex script behavior in every PDF reader. For exact designs, use an authoring application and embed licensed fonts when exporting. Check names and Hindi combining marks in the final PDF.

Try the related tools

Further reading

Updated 2026-10-18. These are implementation notes and practical explanations, not a conformance certificate.