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Re: problem mouse copy/past from PDF

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On Tue, Sep 20, 2016 at 06:30:10PM +0100, Brian wrote:
> On Tue 20 Sep 2016 at 16:12:35 +0100, Lisi Reisz wrote:
> 
> > On Monday 19 September 2016 14:15:03 Celejar wrote:
> > > On Sun, 18 Sep 2016 16:14:37 -0400
> > > Haines Brown <haines@histomat.net> wrote:
> > >
> > > ...
> > >
> > > > Evince apparently does not support selecting text for copying. This does
> > >
> > > My evince (3.14.1, from  3.14.1-2+deb8u1) does support selecting text
> > > for copying.
> > >
> > > Celejar
> > 
> > Mine too.  But then I also have 3.14.1-2+deb8u1.
> 
> Selection of text from a pdf isn't always possible with evince. Example:
> 
>   paps /etc/nssitch.conf > nsswitch.ps
                ^^^ probably typo
>   ps2pdf nsswitch.ps nsswitch.pdf
> 
> When it is selectable it isn't necessarily capable of being copied.
> 
> Isn't life confusing?

I can confirm that a pdf produced this way has no usable text to
select (tested here with xpdf). If you generate the .ps with a2ps

  a2ps /etc/nsswitch.conf -o nsswitch.ps

then "it works". Thus, it seems to be paps who's doing something
strange (and in fact, looking at the Postscript file yields something
pretty funny. Paps seems to be out-smarting itself.

Note that a Postscript (or a PDF) can render something which *looks*
like text, but for all purposes *isn't* a text (for an extreme case,
think a bitmap image of a text).

regards
- -- tomás
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problem mouse copy/past from PDF Haines Brown <haines@histomat.net> - 2016-09-18 22:30 +0200
  Re: problem mouse copy/past from PDF Celejar <celejar@gmail.com> - 2016-09-20 04:00 +0200
    Re: problem mouse copy/past from PDF Lisi Reisz <lisi.reisz@gmail.com> - 2016-09-20 17:20 +0200
      Re: problem mouse copy/past from PDF Brian <ad44@cityscape.co.uk> - 2016-09-20 19:40 +0200
        Re: problem mouse copy/past from PDF <tomas@tuxteam.de> - 2016-09-20 21:10 +0200
          Re: problem mouse copy/past from PDF Brian <ad44@cityscape.co.uk> - 2016-09-21 12:40 +0200
            Re: problem mouse copy/past from PDF <tomas@tuxteam.de> - 2016-09-21 18:20 +0200
              Re: problem mouse copy/past from PDF David Wright <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk> - 2016-09-22 07:10 +0200
                Re: problem mouse copy/past from PDF David Wright <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk> - 2016-09-22 08:00 +0200
  Re: problem mouse copy/past from PDF David Wright <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk> - 2016-09-20 05:50 +0200
    Re: problem mouse copy/past from PDF Doug <dmcgarrett@optonline.net> - 2016-09-20 07:00 +0200
      Re: problem mouse copy/past from PDF Doug <dmcgarrett@optonline.net> - 2016-09-20 07:20 +0200
    Re: problem mouse copy/past from PDF Brian <ad44@cityscape.co.uk> - 2016-09-20 16:10 +0200
      Re: problem mouse copy/past from PDF David Wright <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk> - 2016-09-20 18:10 +0200
        Re: problem mouse copy/past from PDF Brian <ad44@cityscape.co.uk> - 2016-09-20 19:30 +0200
        Re: problem mouse copy/past from PDF <tomas@tuxteam.de> - 2016-09-20 21:10 +0200
      Re: problem mouse copy/past from PDF Brian <ad44@cityscape.co.uk> - 2016-09-21 21:40 +0200
        Re: problem mouse copy/past from PDF David Wright <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk> - 2016-09-22 07:50 +0200

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