[XeTeX] how to do (better) searchable PDFs in xelatex?

[Ross Moore]

Hi Peter,

On 15/10/2012, at 1:45 PM, Peter Baker wrote:

> On 10/14/12 7:47 PM, mskala at ansuz.sooke.bc.ca wrote:
>> If font designers did that, and if PDF readers looked at the glyph names according to Adobe's directions, then searches would work regardless of PUA use. However, not all fonts and not all readers do this.
> My experience is that "not all" = "none." I've tested my own font (Junicode) in Adobe Reader, Preview, Evince and Goodreader (with PDFs generated by XeTeX), and the result is the same in all. Standard ligatures (those encoded at FB00 and following) work fine, but others do not. For example, Junicode has an f_t ligature in the PUA, properly named, and when that is used you cannot search for "after" or "often" in any of those PDF readers. But when I move it out of the PUA into an unencoded slot, it works fine.

Any chance of providing example PDFs of this?
(preferably using uncompressed streams, to more easily
examine the raw PDF content)

Do the documents also have CMap resources for the fonts,
or is the sole means of identifying the meaning of the
ligature characters coming from their names only?

Have these difficulties been reported to Adobe recently?
If not, would you mind me doing so?

> 
> Same with Libertine.
> 
> Peter


Cheers

	Ross

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Ross Moore                                       ross.moore at mq.edu.au 
Mathematics Department                           office: E7A-419      
Macquarie University                             tel: +61 (0)2 9850 8955
Sydney, Australia  2109                          fax: +61 (0)2 9850 8114
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