The PDF layout engine renders the PDF, PostScript, and PowerPoint formats. The engine tries to locate and use the font specified at design time. The PDF layout engine searches for the font files first in the fonts folder of the plug‑in, org.eclipse.birt.report.engine.fonts. If the specified font is not in this folder, the BIRT engine searches for the font in the system‑defined font folder. You can change the default load order by using the settings in the font configuration file.

When the required font for a character is not available in the search path or is incorrectly installed, the engine uses the fonts defined in the UNICODE block for that character. If the UNICODE definition also fails, the engine replaces the character with a question mark (?) to denote a missing character. The font used for the ? character is the default font, Times‑Roman.