I am not sure whether this is a bug with JasperReports or with a font file, but I start posting my question here. Maybe someone can take a look at it and point me to more details. I try to render uincode IPA chars, and one of them is U+032F: "COMBINING INVERTED BREVE BELOW". The font "Doulos SIL" is used for this: scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php Attached is a simple self running report ("ipatest.jrxml"): it renders a static text containing this breve using "Doulos SIL" and alternatively using "Arial Unicode MS" (a Microsoft font included in Office). In both cases, the char "0x032f" (combining inverted breve below) is rendered below the second "u" of the IPA - all is fine. But when printing, the Doulo SIL breve is placed at the wrong location - some chars to the right. See screenshot "brevebelow.png" (taken from the PDF printout - with some arrows to show the problem). "JasperReports - ipatest.pdf" was generated by using "PDFCreator". The MS font prints fine, but it is not an alternative because it misses other IPA chars. Thanks Wolfgang