FO to PDF/a Conversion with Apache FOP Java Library

Question

I\'m trying to convert .fo files to PDF/a with Apache FOP 2.1 with the exemple code given in the documentation. I managed to convert the hell

Answer 1

I was able to create a PDF/A output using the same example files after a few changes:

1. in the input FO file, I explicitly added font-family="Helvetica" (or your favourite font family) in a position where it effected all the text

   Without this, even if FOP defaults to using Helvetica when no font-family is set, it apparently is not able to find a configuration for it.

2. in the configuration file, I mapped the Helvetica font family to an existing font, for example Arial

3. in the Java code, I configured FOP to use my configuration file, and the user agent to enable accessibility

   import org.apache.avalon.framework.configuration.Configuration;
   import org.apache.avalon.framework.configuration.DefaultConfigurationBuilder;
   import org.apache.fop.apps.FopFactoryBuilder;
   
   ...
   DefaultConfigurationBuilder cfgBuilder = new DefaultConfigurationBuilder();
   Configuration cfg = cfgBuilder.buildFromFile(new File("/Users/lfurini/fop.xconf"));
   FopFactoryBuilder fopFactoryBuilder = new FopFactoryBuilder(new File(".").toURI()).setConfiguration(cfg);
   FopFactory fopFactory = fopFactoryBuilder.build();
   
   FOUserAgent foUserAgent = fopFactory.newFOUserAgent();
   // configure foUserAgent as desired
   foUserAgent.setAccessibility(true);
   foUserAgent.getRendererOptions().put("pdf-a-mode", "PDF/A-1b");
   ...