How to Insert a Linefeed with PDFBox drawString

java, pdf, pdf-generation, pdfbox

Solution

The pdf format doesn't know line breaks. You have to split the string and move the text position to the next line, using moveTextPositionByAmount.

This is not a special "pdfbox-feature", it is due to the pdf format definition; so there is no way for drawString and there are also no other methods to be called that support linefeeds.

Problem

I have to make a PDF with a Table. So far it work fine, but now I want to add a wrapping feature. So I need to insert a Linefeed. ``` contentStream.beginText(); contentStream.moveTextPositionByAmount(x, y); contentStream.drawString("Some text to insert into a table."); contentStream.endText(); ``` I want to add a "`\n`" before "insert". I tried "`\u000A`" which is the hex value for linefeed, but Eclipse shows me an error. Is it possible to add linefeed with drawString?

Original source