Fixing utf-8 character encoding

[elyrko]

I've seen multiple threads here about character encoding and i myself just had to deal with an issue where the characters did not display correctly for my native language.

Basically what i tried was to encode the characters outside the main InvoicePrinter class and it was quite frustrating to see that nothing really worked. I then went to check the main InvoicePrinter class and found out that the class has constant variables set for character encoding which overwrites whatever i try to encode beforehand.

So to set the preferred encoding for your language you must change the constants inside the main konekt/pdf-invoice/src/InvoicePrinter.php class

public const ICONV_CHARSET_OUTPUT_A = '{PREFERRED_ENCODING}//TRANSLIT';
public const ICONV_CHARSET_OUTPUT_B = '{PREFERRED_ENCODING}//TRANSLIT';

// In my case it should be
public const ICONV_CHARSET_OUTPUT_A = 'windows-1252//TRANSLIT';
public const ICONV_CHARSET_OUTPUT_B = 'windows-1252//TRANSLIT';

Or you may extend the main class and overwrite the constants. The preferred way for the future ofcourse would be to have a method for setting the character encoding.

Additionaly for the footer note you still must do it beforehand

$invoice = new InvoicePrinter('A4','€',$invoice_details['lang']);

.....

$invoice->setFooternote(
    iconv($invoice::ICONV_CHARSET_INPUT, $invoice::ICONV_CHARSET_OUTPUT_B, 'Üõlüüžš')
);