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: "Monique Semp" <monique -dot- semp -at- earthlink -dot- net>
To: "Sharon Burton" <sharon -at- anthrobytes -dot- com>, "Robert Lauriston" <robert -at- lauriston -dot- com>, "techwr-l" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
Date: Tue, 15 Dec 2009 11:44:42 -0800

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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