Non Unicode font and Pdf — Typophile archive

H_Afash4 Jul 2008

Dears,

Suppose I have a Unicode Arabic fonts (Or Open type font) which was created in MS Volt. (Such as Arabic Typesetting)
I used in it some glyphs didn't have Unicode code. Such as (Theh with Khah ثخ (.

When I created a pdf file with Adobe Acrobat and open it in Adobe Reader or in Acrobat itself and try to search to theh with Khah ثخ, I didn’t find it.
Acrobat and some program can't find any glyph or a ligature didn't have a Unicode codepage.
How could I solve that?
If I give this glyph (ligature) a Unicode code from unicode private area, could I find it. Did Acrobat or other program support Private Area (UPA)?
To whom had Mac computer, shall we face the same problems.

If we used non Unicode fonts to create the pdf file and try to use search to any glyph, it didn't find anything. (It didn't find the base glyph such Jeem, beh … etc)

Best~

Hasan Abu Afash
www.hibastudio.com
hasan@hibastudio.com

cfynn21 Jul 2008#

If glyphs in a font are named according to Adobe's "uniXXXXYYYY...." Glyph Naming Convention then you can search in PDF files and cut and paste text from PDF to other applications since Acrobat can re-construct the Unicode characters of the original text by parsing the glyph names. This works even for ligatures which do not correspond to a single Unicode code point and have no Unicode index in the font.

If glyphs in a complex script font are named in any other manner this doesn't work - so results will differ from font to font.

I also don't know which non-Adobe PDF viewers support this.

- Chris