Public bug reported:
In Ubuntu 10.04 (GPL Ghostscript 8.71) cups-pdf delivers searchable PDFs,
containing text that can neatly be copied and pasted.
In Ubuntu 11.10 (GPL Ghostscript 9.04) this feature is gone. PDFs cannot be
searched, and a copy/paste produces garbage text.
I experimented with capturing PostScript files from a printer with a very
simple CUPS Backend, simply streaming stdin to a PostScript file. I installed
and shared this printer on 11.10 and used it on 10.04.
I used `ps2pdf` on 11.10 to generate the PDF files (just like cups-pdf does).
I merged the sample PDFs from the two Ubuntu versions in one PDF file and
executed `fontspdf` to see what fonts were present. This is the result:
name type emb sub uni object ID
------------------------------------ ----------------- --- --- --- ---------
AGTLMZ+Webdings TrueType yes yes yes 71 0
GYTYEM+DejaVuSerif TrueType yes yes yes 72 0
ZXOPYM+Verdana TrueType yes yes yes 73 0
PMFCNH+Verdana-Bold TrueType yes yes yes 74 0
KPEIOE+WenQuanYiZenHei TrueType yes yes yes 90 0
KIIHFC+DejaVuSerif TrueType yes yes yes 91 0
BPBDFC+UnBatang-Identity-H CID TrueType yes yes no 93 0
YTZIYS+Ume-P-Gothic-C4-Identity-H CID TrueType yes yes no 94 0
HYRHDD+DejaVuSansMono-Identity-H CID TrueType yes yes no 95 0
The searchable part of the PDF (originating from the 10.04 PostScript) leans on
the embedded 'TrueType' fonts which have unicode encoding.
On the other hand, the Ubuntu 11.10 PostScript is reponsible for the 'CID
TrueType' font embedding. The absence of any 'unicode' encoding here seems
responsible for this part not being searchable.
What happened between 10.04 and 11.10?
Using `ps2pdf` on 10.04 with the PostScript file produced on 11.10, also
produces a non-searchable PDF.
Did the printing process on 11.10 change, producing a different PostScript
format? A format that `ps2pdf` can't handle?
Is this a bug?
P.S. I printed from different applications (gedit, geany, FireFox, Libre
Office), all with the same result.
** Affects: ghostscript (Ubuntu)
Importance: Undecided
Status: New
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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/942866
Title:
Ubuntu 11.10: printing to PDF produces unsearchable PDF (contrary to
10.04)
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