How to create a pushbuttonfield with double byte character text?

I need a pushbuttonfield with double byte characters (DBCS) as the text.

This works:

PushbuttonField myButton = new PushbuttonField(writer, rect, "JapaneseButton");
myButton.setText("japanese text here");

But if I replace "japanese text here" with real Japanese text, the text doesn't show.

Posted on StackOverflow on Mar 12, 2015 by Jason

Please take a look at the CreateJapaneseButton example. It creates a PDF with a button that looks like this:

Button with Japanese text

Your code snippet is very short, but you probably have all the code you need, except the line that sets the font:

public static final String FONT = "src/main/resources/fonts/FreeSans.ttf";
public static final String JAPANESE = "\u3042\u304d\u3089";

public void createPdf(String dest) throws Exception {
    PdfDocument pdfDoc = new PdfDocument(new PdfWriter(dest));
    PdfFont font = PdfFontFactory.createFont(FONT, PdfEncodings.IDENTITY_H);
    PdfButtonFormField pushButton = PdfFormField.createPushButton(
            pdfDoc,
            new Rectangle(36, 780, 108, 26),
            "japanese",
            JAPANESE,
            font,
            PdfFormField.DEFAULT_FONT_SIZE);
    PdfAcroForm form = PdfAcroForm.getAcroForm(pdfDoc, true);
    form.addField(pushButton);
    pdfDoc.close();
}

If you don't set the font, the default font is used. The default font is the Standard Type 1 font Helvetica. This font doesn't know how to write Japanese. I used the font freesans.ttf. If you don't have that font, you can try arialuni.ttf or any other font that supports Japanese.

Click How to create a pushbuttonfield with double byte character text? if you want to see how to answer this question in iText 5.