Oracle BI Publisher Blog

I have seen several threads lately on the forum asking along the lines of -  Where the heck are the checkboxes on my report that I included in my template? Well, they are there they are just hidden, sort of. When you add a check box field to a template the Publisher engine interprets them correctly i.e. should they be checked or not, but the problem is, that none of the standard PDF fonts or the fonts publisher ships have a decent checkbox glylph. Therefore, if you're lucky you get a filled/unfilled diamond shape (if the publisher fonts are accessible) or you get nothing at all.

There is a solution to all this and its down to configuration, if you let the engine know where the checkbox font is and which glyphs represent 'checked' and 'unchecked' then it will pick them up and use them in your output.  

The method to use to configure the font and glyphs is going to depend on your platform. I tested with the Wingdings ttf font and used characters 253 (unchecked) and 254 (checked).

To get the right glyph number:
1. Open MSWord and use Insert->Symbol.
2. Now find the font you want
3. then the glyphs you want, the glyph characgter code will be in the bottom right hand corner of the dialog.

Dont forget to ensure you are licensed to use the font you choose for the check box glyphs.

Config File - EBS (pre-5.6), JDE, PS and if your using the APIs

Your documentation should tell you where the config file should located and what to put in it. For the check boxes you need:

1. The font location, we need to tell the publisher engine where the Wingdings font is located:

<font family="Wingdings" style="normal" weight="normal">
 <truetype path="c:\windows\fonts\wingding.ttf"/>
</font>

2. The glyphs to be used. Here we specify the font family name ie 'Wingdings' and the 253/254 glyphs

<property name="rtf-checkbox-glyph">Wingdings;253;254</property>

Config Manager - EBS (5.6 and above)

1. Load the font to the manager - thats been covered here
2. Update the 'Characters used for checkbox' field with the values you want ie Wingdings;253;254

Now when you run outputs to PDF you will see your checkboxes as expected and no longer be boxless.