Text and Fonts

compose2pdf supports rich text styling through standard Compose text APIs, with automatic font embedding for consistent rendering.

Text styling example — download PDF

Basic text styling

renderToPdf {
    Column(Modifier.padding(24.dp), verticalArrangement = Arrangement.spacedBy(8.dp)) {
        Text("Normal text")
        Text("Bold text", fontWeight = FontWeight.Bold)
        Text("Italic text", fontStyle = FontStyle.Italic)
        Text("Bold italic", fontWeight = FontWeight.Bold, fontStyle = FontStyle.Italic)
        Text("Large heading", fontSize = 36.sp)
        Text("Small caption", fontSize = 10.sp)
        Text("Custom color", color = Color(0xFF1976D2))
    }
}

Text decorations

Text("Underlined", textDecoration = TextDecoration.Underline)
Text("Strikethrough", textDecoration = TextDecoration.LineThrough)
Text(
    "Both decorations",
    textDecoration = TextDecoration.Underline + TextDecoration.LineThrough,
)

Text alignment

Column(Modifier.fillMaxWidth()) {
    Text("Left aligned (default)")
    Text("Center aligned", textAlign = TextAlign.Center, modifier = Modifier.fillMaxWidth())
    Text("Right aligned", textAlign = TextAlign.End, modifier = Modifier.fillMaxWidth())
}

Spacing

Text("Wide letter spacing", letterSpacing = 4.sp)
Text("Tall line height", lineHeight = 28.sp)

Overflow and truncation

Text(
    "This very long text will be truncated with an ellipsis if it overflows...",
    maxLines = 1,
    overflow = TextOverflow.Ellipsis,
)

Text(
    "This text is limited to two lines and will truncate after that...",
    maxLines = 2,
    overflow = TextOverflow.Ellipsis,
)

Fonts

Default: InterFontFamily

By default, renderToPdf uses InterFontFamily – a bundled set of static Inter fonts:

Weight	Style	File
Normal	Normal	Inter-Regular.ttf
Bold	Normal	Inter-Bold.ttf
Normal	Italic	Inter-Italic.ttf
Bold	Italic	Inter-BoldItalic.ttf

These are embedded and subsetted automatically, so PDFs look the same on every system.

Using system fonts

Pass null to use system fonts instead:

val pdf = renderToPdf(defaultFontFamily = null) {
    Text("Using system fonts")
}

The library resolves system fonts from platform-specific directories (macOS, Linux, Windows). System fonts are embedded in the PDF via PDFBox’s automatic subsetting.

Using a custom font

Supply your own FontFamily:

val myFont = FontFamily(
    Font(resource = "fonts/MyFont-Regular.ttf", weight = FontWeight.Normal),
    Font(resource = "fonts/MyFont-Bold.ttf", weight = FontWeight.Bold),
)

val pdf = renderToPdf(defaultFontFamily = myFont) {
    Text("Custom font!")
}

Place font files in your src/main/resources/fonts/ directory.

Font resolution chain

When the converter encounters text, it resolves fonts in this order:

Bundled fonts – Inter Regular/Bold/Italic/BoldItalic (when using InterFontFamily)
System fonts – searched by font-family name in platform font directories
PDF standard 14 – Helvetica, Times-Roman, Courier (fallback; always available, never embedded)

Variable fonts are not supported. PDFBox cannot render variable fonts correctly – they are automatically skipped during font resolution. Use static .ttf or .otf font files only.