[pdftex] "fi" can not be copied correctly in a pdf generated by pdflatex

[Ulrike Fischer]

Am Fri, 11 Nov 2011 10:42:33 -0600 schrieb Peng Yu:

> Hi,
> 
> I run pdflatex on the following tex file. In the generated pdf file,
> "fi" can not be copied correctly (from say, acrobat). I then tried
> latex->dvipdf, and I can copy "fi" from the pdf file generated in this
> way. 

On my system (miktex 2.9) I can't copy the fi and the fl from a pdf
generated with latex + dvipdfmx (due to a curious interference of
the glyphlists used by dvipdfmx). 

> Does anybody know what is the problem with pdflatex. How to make
> pdflatex generated pdf so that "fi" is copiable?
> 
> \documentclass{report}
> \begin{document}
> Definition
> \end{document}

Another reason to use T1-encoding. It should work with 

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\begin{document}
ff fl ffi definition
\end{document}


Explanation: The cm-super fonts contains "Ligature" declaration
which the adobe reader can use as you can see if you look in the
afm-file. e.g.

C 102 ; WX 305.481 ; N f ; B 33 1 358 706 ; L f ff ; L i fi ; L l fl
;

(The important part for the fi is the "L i fi").


If you insist to use the old cm-fonts you can also get around the
problem with this:

\documentclass{article}
\input{glyphtounicode}
\pdfgentounicode=1
\begin{document}
ff fl ffi definition
\end{document}
 

-- 
Ulrike Fischer