Re: consolas font's hyphen - causing odd copy/paste result from PDF(from FrameMaker)

Subject: Re: consolas font's hyphen - causing odd copy/paste result from PDF(from FrameMaker)
From: Robert Lauriston <robert -at- lauriston -dot- com>
To: techwr-l <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
Date: Tue, 15 Dec 2009 13:05:10 -0800

I duplicated your problem on my system (FrameMaker 9, Acrobat Pro 9).
It's ASCII 45 hyphen-minus in the document. Either FrameMaker or
Distiller is substituting Uncode 2010 hyphen during the PDF
generation. The Consolas font has both characters.

In many contexts, such substitution would be correct, as hyphen-minus
is supposed to be for code listings only. But this is a code listing.
Users should be able to cut and paste.

It shouldn't matter what display font is selected in the text editor.

On Tue, Dec 15, 2009 at 11:44 AM, Monique Semp
<monique -dot- semp -at- earthlink -dot- net> wrote:
> Well, I'm not positive...
>
> When I view the Fonts in the PDF's document properties, I see several
> Consolas entries.  All say "Consolas (Embedded Subset)".  Some list
> "TrueType" and some list "TrueType (CID)" for the "Type".  And some list
> "Ansi" and others list "Identity-H" for the "Encoding".  So I guess I could
> create separate PDF files that each have only one of the code font styles
> (regular, bold, bold italic, etc.), and see which exact font corresponds to
> the hyphen.
>
> I'm pasting the PDF chars into a text editor, whose default I have set to
> Courier New.  But I don't know what font my developers are using when they
> copy-paste from the PDF.  It's likely plain old Courier, but I don't know.
> And actually, the commands are intended to be entered at the command line,
> so I think font would be irrelevant then?  No, actually -- I know that you
> can set a font for a command shell.  But again, the audience for the doc
> could set it to anything, so even asking my developers what they're doing
> here doesn't seem particularly relevant.
>
> I did just try changing the font in my text editor to Consolas, but I still
> get an odd two-char combo instead of the expected hyphen.
>
> When I copy-paste directly from the Frame doc into my text editor,
> everything seems fine regardless of the font I set for my text editor.
>
> I downloaded a hex editor (Hex Workshop), and tried a few more things:
>
> 1.  When I copy-paste the Consolas hyphen from the Frame file into the hex
> editor, it looks like "-." (hyphen dot) in the ascii representation, it's
> 2D 00 in the hex window, and when I change the viewer from ascii to
> unicode, it looks like "- " (hyphen space).
>
> 2.  When I repeat that experiment with the Courier New hyphen from the
> Frame file, I get identical results.
>
> 3.  When I copy-paste the Consolas hyphen from the PDF into the hex editor,
> it looks like ".]." (dot bracket dot) in the ascii representation, it's 81
> 5D 00 in the hex window, and when I change the viewer from ascii to
> unicode, it shows an unprintable character followed by a space.
>
> 4.  And when I copy-paste the Courier New hyphen from the PDF into the hex
> editor, it looks like "-." (hyphen dot) in the ascii representation, it's
> 2D 00 in the hex window, and when I change the viewer from ascii to
> unicode, it looks like "- " (hyphen space).
>
> So I think the Consolas hyphen may actually be a "short hyphen" or
> something.  And then the question becomes, "is there any way to control how
> Distiller interprets and translates a given character"?
>
> -Monique
>
> <snip>
>> When the text is pasted into what ever you're pasting it into, what font
> is
>> used?
>>
>> For example, it's consolas in the PDF. You paste it into Word and it's
> Times
>> Roman?
>>
>> I have some ideas but this is the critical question to know if we should
> go
>> further down the track I'm thinking.
>>
>>
>
>
>
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RE: consolas font's hyphen - causing odd copy/paste result from PDF(from FrameMaker): From: Monique Semp

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