pdf copying errors

[VenomousFiligree]

I've just left behind a nuked Windows laptop and taken on an iMac, and I'm liking most of what I see.

FG works fine with CrossOver, however I'm having problems with copying text into FG. Cutting and pasting in Windows never gave me any problems, now I'm getting lots of character errors :(


‘I’m no James Bond, with a sexy KGB minx trying to seduce me in every hotel room. That’s about the first thing they drum into you at Capital Laundry Services (‘Washes cleaner than clean!’): life is not a spy movie, work is not romantic, and there’s nothing particularly exciting about the job.’


ÔIÕm no James Bond, with a sexy KGB minx trying to seduce me in every hotel room. ThatÕs about the first thing they drum into you at Capital Laundry Services (ÔWashes cleaner than clean!Õ): life is not a spy movie, work is not romantic, and thereÕs nothing particularly exciting about the job.Õ

Any help appreciated!

Phil

[Griogre]

It's likely the font. Slanted single quotes almost never paste right in certain fonts. You might not have the default font so its substituting one or you might be unlucky and the PDF font is one FG doesn't like.

[Valarian]

I've always had issues with slanted quote marks. Also with too many line feeds and, for some reason, the letter i (get an extra space after an i).

[VenomousFiligree]

Not sure it's a font issue with FG, rather the operating system and associated software.

In windows I had a similar issue as Valarian, if I used Acrobat Reader and I copied and pasted into FG, I would have space issues associated with f and/or i's and line breaks at the end of every line. I changed to nitro pdf and both these went away, however I would get double spaces appearing occasionally.

In both linux and OSX with a variety of pdf readers any "extra" form of character ie slanted quotes, three full stops, long dashes, all give errors similar to above.

[Zeus]

I had a similar problem when I first transitioned to the Mac OSX platform. In my case it wasn't a FGII problem but rather an OSX font substitution problem which can wreak havoc across all applications when multiple copies of the same font family have been installed.

The cure I found is to open the Font book in Applications and look through the font list for any fonts listed with a yellow exclamation mark and then right clicking each of these and selecting the option 'Resolve Dependencies'.

Once all fonts were listed cleanly, I could once again cut n paste and view certain fonts without text corruption.

You need to repeat this after you have installed any apps as installing applications is usually what causes the font substitution problems to occur. Its apparently something Apple has broken in OSX since Snow Leopard was released and has yet to fix.

[VenomousFiligree]

Had a look in the Font Book and no yellow exclamation marks, so I assume they're all functioning as they should :confused:

[Zeus]

What happens when you cut n paste pdf text into another app like TextEdit.app? Do you get the same text corruption?

[VenomousFiligree]

It copies fine in everything apart from FG

[Zeus]

In that case, it maybe that the PDF uses a font that doesn't quite map characters to the usual keys or the its using characters outside of the usual ASCII set which are not supported in the font used in FGII.

Which ruleset are you using? I want to see if I can re-produce this on my iMac.

[VenomousFiligree]

I'm using the BRP ruleset, I also tried it with the 4e ruleset and it was the same.

I also tried pdf - open office - FG, still the same and pdf - notepad++ - FG which worked! :)

[Zeus]

Sounds like the PDF was produced using a different charset than the one FGII uses (iso-8859-1).

[VenomousFiligree]

OK, if that's so, why did it work in Windows on my laptop?

[Zeus]

Well I am at a loss then. All the usual things have been checked. :(