Magento 2.1.6 - Invoice PDF doesn't support Thai

[jsdupuis]

Preconditions

1. Magento CE 2.1.6

Steps to reproduce

1. In the admin, go to Sales > Orders
2. Select one 'completed' order and select the action 'Print Invoices' (any of the Print... actions actually)

Expected result

1. Be able to read Thai names and Thai adresses in Thai alphabet

Actual result

1. Thai letters are replaced by squares. Thai baht currency symbol is also unreadable.
   invoice2017-05-17_11-19-09.pdf

[1408sheva]

Internal ticket MAGETWO-70209 was created;

[jsdupuis]

Any suggestion for a temporary fix?

[natawut-ch]

@jsdupuis

Here is very dirty workaround / backup all file before doing these steps. ->

1. Get Thai font and upload to /lib/web/fonts (Font-version must be table v3, since the library can't parse table v4 font.)
2. Change font-location to uploaded fonts' location in /vendor/magento/module-sales/Model/Order/Pdf/AbstractPdf.php

   function _setFontRegular
   function _setFontBold
   function _setFontItalic

** you might need to adjust font size according to your font, finding "setFontSize"

3. Modify $drawingString in same file :: /vendor/magento/module-sales/Model/Order/Pdf/AbstractPdf.php

        $drawingString = '"libiconv"' == ICONV_IMPL ? iconv(
            'UTF-8',
            'UTF-16BE//IGNORE',
            $string
        ) : @iconv(
            'UTF-8',
            'UTF-16BE',
            $string
        );

to

        $drawingString = mb_convert_encoding($string, "UTF-16BE", "UTF-8");

If you get the error about cannot convert MacRoman. then you might have to edit /vendor/magento/zendframework1/library/Zend/Pdf/FileParser.php and look for

function readStringMacRoman

replace

return iconv('MacRoman', $characterSet, $bytes);

with

return mb_convert_encoding($bytes, $characterSet, 'UTF-8');

PS. This is not appropriate way to deal with this issue. However LinLibertineFont contains no Thai-characters , and iconv lib can't properly convert MacRoman to UTF16BE (Used in thai font like TH Sarabun)

PS.2. This is very dirty fix. If your store is in EN/TH then it might work. But this might raise some errors if dealing with other char-encoding.

-------- BTW, Thai-font issue is in magento since 1.xx