PHP PDFlib unicode - php

Question

is it possible to render pdf in UTF-8. for persian or arabic characters? i dont wanna use tcpdf. it's have a performance problem during make pdf via php scripts. I will try latest version of php 5.4 and pdflib 8.0.4p2 but i cant see valid persian words.
<?php
try {
$p = new PDFlib();
/* open new PDF file; insert a file name to create the PDF on disk */
if ($p->begin_document("", "") == 0) {
die("Error: " . $p->get_errmsg());
}
$p->set_info("Creator", "hello.php");
$p->set_info("Author", "Rainer Schaaf");
$p->set_info("Title", "Hello world (PHP)!");
$p->begin_page_ext(595, 842, "");
$font = $p->load_font("Courier", "unicode", "");
$p->setfont($font, 24.0);
$p->set_text_pos(50, 700);
$p->show("Hello world!");
$p->continue_text($p->utf8_to_utf16("(says PHP) سلام جهان", 'utf16'));
$p->end_page_ext("");
$p->end_document("");
$buf = $p->get_buffer();
$len = strlen($buf);
header("Content-type: application/pdf");
header("Content-Length: $len");
header("Content-Disposition: inline; filename=hello.pdf");
print $buf;
}
catch (PDFlibException $e) {
die("PDFlib exception occurred in hello sample:\n" .
"[" . $e->get_errnum() . "] " . $e->get_apiname() . ": " .
$e->get_errmsg() . "\n");
}
catch (Exception $e) {
die($e);
}
$p = 0;

Answer 1

The main problem is that the font Courier does not have glyphs for the arabic text you want to print. If you use a font like Arial Unicode you will see the expected result.
Another tip, use $p->set_parameter("textformat", "utf8");
then you can use utf8 directly as in $p->continue_text("(says PHP) سلام جهان x");