<font-aliases> section
In <font-aliases> section, you can:
*
Define a mapping from a generic family to a font family. For example, the following defines a mapping from generic family "serif" to Type1 font family "Times-Roman":
<mapping name="serif" font-family="Times-Roman"/>
*
Define a mapping from a font family to another font family. This is useful if you want to use a font for PDF rendering that differs from the font used in design-time. For example, the following shows how to replace "simsun" with "Arial Unicode MS":
<mapping name="simsun" font-family="Arial Unicode MS"/>
Previous versions of the BIRT Report Designers use the XML element <font-mapping> instead of <font-aliases>. In the current release, a <font-mapping> element works in the same way as the new <font-aliases> element. When a font configuration file uses both <font-mapping> and <font-aliases>, the engine merges the different mappings from the two sections. If the same entries exist in both sections, the settings in <font-aliases> override those in <font-mapping>.
<composite-font> section
The <composite-font> section defines a composite font. A composite font is a font consisting of many physical fonts used for different characters. The composite fonts are defined by <block> entries. Each <block> entry defines a mapping from a UNICODE range to a font family name, which means the font family is applied for the UNICODE characters in that range. You cannot change the block name or range or index as it is defined by the UNICODE standard. The only item you can change in the block element is the font family name. To find information about all the possible blocks, go to http://www.unicode.org/charts/index.html.
A composite font named all-fonts is applied as a default font. When a character is not defined in the desired font, the font defined in all-fonts is used.
For example, to define a new font for currency symbols, you change font-family in the following <block> entry to the Times Roman font-family:
<composite-font>
<block name="Currency Symbols" range-start="20a0" range-end="20cf"index="58" font-family="Times Roman" />
</composite-font>
In cases when the Times Roman font does not support all the currency symbols, you can define the substitution character by character using the <character> tag, as shown in the following example:
<composite-font>
  
    <character value="?" font-family="Angsana New"/>
    <character value="\u0068" font-family="Times Roman"/>
  
</composite-font>
Note that characters are represented by the attribute, value, which can be presented two ways, the character itself or its UNICODE code.
To find information about all the currency symbols, go to http://www.unicode.org/charts/symbols.html.
<font-paths> section
If the section <font-paths> is set in fontsConfig.xml, the engine ignores the system-defined font folder, and loads the font files specified in the section, <font-paths>. You can add a single font path or multiple paths, ranging from one font path to a whole font folder, as shown in the following example:
<path path="c:/windows/fonts"/>
<path path="/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/TTF/arial.ttf"/>
If this section is set, the PDF layout engine will only load the font files in these paths and ignore the system-defined font folder. If you want to use the system font folder as well, you must include it in this section.
On some systems, the PDF layout engine does not recognize the system-defined font folder. If you encounter this issue, add the font path to the <font-paths> section.

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