title: Reportlab - Unicode characters appear as boxes in unicode-supported font
body: <p>Trying to use reportlab through python 3 to write a document that includes macrons (ā ē ī ō ū), but the macrons are showing up as boxes (■). The document is written in Arial font -- but if I open up the file in a word processor to check the font, the boxes are in 'Segoe UI Symbol' font.</p>
  
  <p>For importing in Arial as a font that supports a broad range of unicode characters (which seems to have worked):</p>
  
  <pre><code>import reportlab.rl_config
  reportlab.rl_config.warnOnMissingFontGlyphs = 0
  from reportlab.pdfbase import pdfmetrics
  from reportlab.pdfbase.ttfonts import TTFont
  pdfmetrics.registerFont(TTFont('Arial', 'Arial.ttf'))
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I also import a dictionary through json, looking something like this when I open the json file in notepad:</p>
  
  <pre><code>{"example1":"b\u0101s"}
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The program reads and writes this dictionary:</p>
  
  <pre><code>from reportlab.platypus import SimpleDocTemplate, Paragraph, Spacer
  from reportlab.lib.styles import getSampleStyleSheet
  doc = SimpleDocTemplate("hello.pdf")
  Story = [Spacer(1,2*inch)]
  style = styles["Normal"]
  with open('CompDict.json','r') as f:
          m_dic=json.load(f)
  for key,value in m_dic:
       p=Paragraph(key+":"+value,style)
       Story.append(p)
  doc.build(Story)
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The outcome should be a pdf with <code>example1:bās</code> but instead comes out as <code>example1:b■s</code></p>