How to display tabs using Zend_PDF - php

Question

I am having an issue with generating pdf documents. My tabulator characters are not displayed properly. I already tried different fonts, or encodings (UTF-8, Windows1552).
With some fonts the character is completely hidden. With some I get a square symbol displayed instead of my tab "\t".
Here is my code.
The question is "How to display tabs using Zend_PDF?"
public function generate()
{
$pdf = new Zend_Pdf();
$page = new Zend_Pdf_Page( Zend_Pdf_Page::SIZE_A4 );
//render basic template
$template = Zend_Pdf_Image::imageWithPath( APPLICATION_PATH . '/resources/pdf/template.png' );
$page->drawImage( $template, 0 ,0, 595, 842 );
//render document title
$font = Zend_Pdf_Font::fontWithPath( APPLICATION_PATH . '/resources/pdf/arial-bold.ttf' );
$page ->setFont($font, 14)
->drawText( 'Rechnung', 390, 700, 'utf-8' );
//render reciever adress
$font = Zend_Pdf_Font::fontWithPath( APPLICATION_PATH . '/resources/pdf/arial.ttf' );
$adressText = array(
'Kundennummer' . "\t" . $this->_user->getUserIdString(),
'Belegnummer' . "\t" . $this->_payin->getPayinIdString(),
'Datum' . "\t\t\t" . $this->_payin->getDateCreated()->format( 'd.m.Y' ),
'Seite' . "\t\t\t" . '1/1'
);
$page ->setFont($font, 12);
$adressY = 680;
foreach( $adressText as $line )
{
$page->drawText( $line, 390, $adressY , 'utf-8' );
$adressY -= 12;
}
//add page to pdf document
$pdf->pages[] = $page;
//save pdf
$pdf->save( $this->getOption( 'path' ) );
}

Answer 1

It could be that the pdf doesn't understand \t.
Try replacing it with 'chr(9)' which is the ascii value of the tab character. For example:-
$tab = chr(9);
$adressText = array(
'Kundennummer' . $tab . $this->_user->getUserIdString(),
'Belegnummer' . $tab . $this->_payin->getPayinIdString(),
// etc..
);
Correction:
As you have to supply the x,y coordinates to Zend_Pdf_Page::drawText() things like tabs, line feeds, etc will not work.
You will have to set fixed coordinates for your tab stops.
For example:-
$tabs = array(5, 20, 30, 50);
$page->drawText("At 1st tab", $tabs[0], 10);
$page->drawText("At 2nd Tab", $tabs[1], 10);
$page->drawText("At 3rd Tab", $tabs[2], 10);
Hopefully you get the idea.