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PDFBox provides three main paths for working with fonts: the Standard 14 fonts built into every PDF viewer, embedded TrueType fonts loaded via PDType0Font, and embedded Type 1 fonts loaded via PDType1Font. Choosing the right approach depends on the character set you need, file size constraints, and viewer compatibility requirements. For anything beyond Latin-1 or when consistent rendering across environments matters, embedding a TrueType font is the safest option.

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Standard 14 fonts

The Standard 14 fonts (Helvetica, Times, Courier, Symbol, ZapfDingbats, and their variants) are guaranteed to be available in every PDF viewer without embedding. Reference them using the Standard14Fonts.FontName enum:
CreateSimpleForm.java
PDFont font = new PDType1Font(FontName.HELVETICA);
Available enum values include HELVETICA, HELVETICA_BOLD, HELVETICA_OBLIQUE, HELVETICA_BOLD_OBLIQUE, TIMES_ROMAN, TIMES_BOLD, TIMES_ITALIC, TIMES_BOLD_ITALIC, COURIER, COURIER_BOLD, COURIER_OBLIQUE, COURIER_BOLD_OBLIQUE, SYMBOL, and ZAPF_DINGBATS. Standard 14 fonts do not support characters outside the Windows-1252 encoding. If your text includes characters from other scripts, use an embedded font instead.

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Embedding a TrueType font

PDType0Font.load() reads a TTF or OTF file from disk, embeds it into the document, and enables full Unicode support including CJK, Cyrillic, ligatures, and emoji.
HelloWorldTTF.java
try (PDDocument doc = new PDDocument())
{
    PDPage page = new PDPage();
    doc.addPage(page);

    PDFont font = PDType0Font.load(doc, new File("font.ttf"));

    try (PDPageContentStream contents = new PDPageContentStream(doc, page))
    {
        contents.beginText();
        contents.setFont(font, 12);
        contents.newLineAtOffset(100, 700);
        contents.showText("Hello, World!");
        contents.endText();
    }

    doc.save("output.pdf");
}
The EmbeddedFonts example demonstrates Unicode text and line leading:
EmbeddedFonts.java
PDType0Font font = PDType0Font.load(document, new File("LiberationSans-Regular.ttf"));

try (PDPageContentStream stream = new PDPageContentStream(document, page))
{
    stream.beginText();
    stream.setFont(font, 12);
    stream.setLeading(12 * 1.2f);
    stream.newLineAtOffset(50, 600);
    stream.showText("PDFBox's Unicode with Embedded TrueType Font");
    stream.newLine();
    stream.showText("English русский язык Tiếng Việt");
    stream.endText();
}
By default PDType0Font.load() subsets the font, embedding only the glyphs actually used in the document. Subsetting can reduce file size significantly when drawing a small number of characters from a large font file.

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Type 1 fonts

To embed a custom Type 1 font from a .pfb file, use the PDType1Font(PDDocument, InputStream) constructor:
HelloWorldType1.java
try (PDDocument doc = new PDDocument())
{
    PDPage page = new PDPage();
    doc.addPage(page);

    PDFont font;
    try (InputStream is = new FileInputStream("font.pfb"))
    {
        font = new PDType1Font(doc, is);
    }

    try (PDPageContentStream contents = new PDPageContentStream(doc, page))
    {
        contents.beginText();
        contents.setFont(font, 12);
        contents.newLineAtOffset(100, 700);
        contents.showText("Hello, World!");
        contents.endText();
    }

    doc.save("output.pdf");
}

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Measuring text width

Font metrics use PDF text space units where 1000 units equals one point at the current font size. To compute the rendered width of a string in points: 
float fontSize = 12;
float textWidth = font.getStringWidth("Hello, World!") / 1000 * fontSize;
This is useful for centering or right-aligning text, calculating line breaks, and positioning elements relative to text.

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