trouble using xhtml2pdf with unicode

Question

I've been trying to convert Hebrew html files without success; the Hebrew characters show up in the output PDF as black rectangles regardless of any encoding I tried.

I tried some unicode test files included in the pisa distribution: pisa-3.0.33\test\test-unicode-all.html and \test-bidirectional-text.html . I ran xhtml2pdf from the command line both with and without --encoding utf-8. Same result: none of the non-Latin characters made it through.

Is this a fonts problem*? If the unicode test file works for you, was there anything you did to set it up?

*FWIW, at least some of these languages, including Hebrew, should work with Arial.

EDIT: Alternatively, if someone has pisa set up and could try converting the unicode test file above, I would be very grateful.