<div dir="ltr"><div>Very weird. I have this problem with OS X's preview, as well as Skim. (Which I believe uses Preview's rendering engine.)</div><div><br></div><div>When I open the PDF in firefox I am able to copy/paste just fine, as well as the screen reader working.</div><div><br></div><div>I should mention that I am using OS X 10.11.</div><div><br></div><div>I think other latex styles get away with this by having only the visible text have the ligature, with copy/paste has the ascii `fi`, rather than the unicode `fi` character.<br></div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br clear="all"><div><div class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div><br></div>~Leif Andersen</div></div></div>
<br><div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Sep 10, 2018 at 6:28 PM, Ross Moore <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:ross.moore@mq.edu.au" target="_blank">ross.moore@mq.edu.au</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
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<div style="word-wrap:break-word;line-break:after-white-space">Hi Leif, Boris, and others<br>
<div><br>
<blockquote type="cite"><div><div class="h5">
<div>On 11 Sep 2018, at 1:40 am, Leif Andersen <<a href="mailto:leif@leifandersen.net" target="_blank">leif@leifandersen.net</a>> wrote:</div>
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<div>As requested in github issue:<br>
<a href="https://protect-au.mimecast.com/s/xk1fCJyBZ6t8rwNJfzd6g8?domain=github.com" target="_blank">https://github.com/<wbr>borisveytsman/acmart/issues/<wbr>309#issuecomment-419690461</a><br>
<br>
Here is an example of a pdf where `first` get's read as `rst`.<br>
<br>
Also note that I'm using the latest version of ACMAART on the ACM's<br>
webpage: <a href="https://protect-au.mimecast.com/s/SBQXCK1DOrCqEWVohAjLfB?domain=acm.org" target="_blank">
https://www.acm.org/<wbr>publications/proceedings-<wbr>template</a><br>
<br>
~Leif Andersen<br>
</div>
</div></div><span id="m_4747314850101105933x_cid:FCD437EF-7126-4669-80F6-81B764B18069@telstra.com.au"><test.pdf></span><span id="m_4747314850101105933x_cid:620BDB3A-35A8-485A-BD8D-916A74661EA8@telstra.com.au"><test.tex></span></div>
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<div>Here is your original post suggesting a problem:</div>
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<p></p>
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<blockquote type="cite">
<p>If you have the word <code>first</code> in a document, a screen reader only sees <code>rst</code>. You also see this if you try to copy/paste the word <code>first</code> from a pdf to a text file.</p>
<p>This seems to be unique to acmart, as all of the other document classes I've tried seem to properly have the text <code>first</code>.</p>
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<div>I tried your example PDF, with the attachments as included above, without any change or recompilation.</div>
<div>Copy/paste of the complete text gave ‘first’ as expected,</div>
<div>since the /ToUnicode resource correctly maps the fi ligature to the pair of letters `f i’ .</div>
<div>So there is no error in that regard.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>I did the Copy/Paste using 3 different PDF viewers on a Mac. : Adobe Acrobat Pro, Apple's Preview and TeXShop’s Preview.</div>
<div>(The latter 2 should give the same results, as they did.)</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>So I have to ask you what software you were using for the Copy/Paste ? On what platform?</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>As for screen readers…</div>
<div> </div>
<div>… there is no uniformity in how they get the stream to be read aloud.</div>
<div>You can try using the accsupp package to set /ActualText and/or /Alt for the ligature, or the whole word.</div>
<div>(Whole word is probably better, as this would have less effect on hyphenation.)</div>
<div>But even then, don’t expect a uniform result.</div>
<div>In my experience, you need a fully tagged PDF; that is, tagged for both structure and content, to have</div>
<div>much effect on what a screen-reader sees. Even then, it is different with different software.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>For me, Adobe’s Read Out Loud did a fine job, apart from the small print in the footnotes.</div>
<div>Presumably the spacing is too narrow to be treated as a word-space, so most of it is spelt out.</div>
<div>(Hence the need for \pdfinterwordspaceon !)</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Apple’s VoiceOver was OK, but splits the word into 'firs t', saying "firs tee"</div>
<div>So I cannot reproduce the problem you described.</div>
<div>I know of now way to affect what VoiceOver actually reads, in such a case of a single syllable word,</div>
<div>despite all the options that its Utility provides (e.g. read numbers as words or digits — NB. Adam).</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Interestingly there is a small problem in the PDF, with regard to fonts.</div>
<div>There are 2 different subsets sharing the same name: RBUZNK+LinLibertineT</div>
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Acrobat Pro’s Preflight lists this as an error — though not a critical one.
<div>It doesn’t affect the visual layout, nor should it affect any text extraction, as the subsets are given</div>
<div>different PostScript names within the page content stream. </div>
<div>Nevertheless the subsets should be given different 6-letter subset prefixes, so this is technically</div>
<div>an error by pdfTeX – which is why this message is being copied to <a href="mailto:pdftex@tug.org" target="_blank">pdftex@tug.org</a> .</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>So Lief, I must ask also what version of TeXLive, or pdfTeX, are you using?</div>
<div>Including the .log file would have provided this information.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div><br>
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<div>Next, I renamed and compiled with TeXshop, using:</div>
<div> </div>
<div>
<div style="margin:0px;line-height:normal;font-family:Menlo">This is pdfTeX, Version 3.14159265-2.6-1.40.18 (TeX Live 2017) (preloaded format=pdflatex)</div>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Again the same subsetting prefix was shared by two font dictionaries.</div>
<div>I’ve not updated to TeXLive 2018, so don’t know if this is fixed there already.</div>
<div> </div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Hope this helps.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div> Ross</div>
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<div>
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