title: Russian String Formatting in Flowable
body: <p>There have been many posts about how to use <code>reportlab</code> to create foreign text using <code>drawString</code> or <code>drawCentredString</code>, but I am struggling to wrap the text in a <code>Paragraph</code> or <code>Frame</code>.  </p>
  
  <p>The code below works to print the Russian text when called explicitly, but when using paragraph and frame it fails:</p>
  
  <pre><code># -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
  from reportlab.pdfgen import canvas
  from reportlab.lib.pagesizes import letter
  from reportlab.lib.units import inch
  from reportlab.platypus import Paragraph, Frame
  from reportlab.lib.styles import getSampleStyleSheet
  
  #Set the Arial font
  from reportlab.pdfbase import pdfmetrics 
  from reportlab.pdfbase.ttfonts import TTFont 
  pdfmetrics.registerFont(TTFont('Arial', 'Arial.ttf'))
  
  #Set Dimensions of the sheet
  width, height = letter
  margin = 0.5*inch
  mwidth = width - 2*margin
  mheight = height - 2*margin
  
  #Set the styles to Centered and Arial
  styleSheet = getSampleStyleSheet()
  style = styleSheet['Normal']
  style.alignment = 1
  style.font = "Arial"
  style.fontSize = 14
  
  
  def Fill_Canvas(c):
      #Create Border
      c.translate(margin,margin)
      c.setLineWidth(4)
      c.rect(0,0, mwidth, mheight)
  
      #Create Line
      c.translate(0,mheight-inch)
      c.line(0.5*inch ,0,mwidth - 0.5*inch,0)
  
  
      #Create Russia Text
      c.setFont("Arial",36)
      c.translate(0,-inch)
      c.drawCentredString(mwidth/2,0,u"ТЕХНИЧЕСКИЙ ПАСПОРТ".encode('utf-8'))
      c.translate(0,-.75*inch)
      c.drawCentredString(mwidth/2,0,u"HA".encode('utf-8'))
  
      #Create description
      c.translate(0, -.75*inch)
      f = Frame(0,0, mwidth, 0.5*inch,showBoundary=1)
      story = []
      story.append(Paragraph(u"Sample russian text: ТЕХНИЧЕСКИЙ ПАСПОРТ".encode('utf-8'),style))
      f.addFromList(story,c)
  
  #Create PDF
  c = canvas.Canvas("Hello.pdf",pagesize = letter)
  Fill_Canvas(c)
  c.showPage()
  c.save()
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Any hints?</p>