Advanced text features and PDF
The post explores complex text features in PDFs, covering Unicode, glyph representation, kerning, and font challenges. It emphasizes tools like Harfbuzz and CapyPDF for accurate text handling in PDFs.
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The blog post discusses advanced text features and PDF handling. It delves into the complexities of representing text in PDFs, including source text, Unicode codepoints, glyph ids, and ActualText. Kerning, glyph substitution, and alternate forms like ligatures and OpenType fonts are also explored. The post highlights challenges such as text selection, glyph lookup, and handling multiple glyphs for the same Unicode codepoint. It mentions the role of libraries like Harfbuzz in shaping text and the limitations of tools like Freetype in reverse glyph mapping. The post concludes by noting that PDF generator libraries, like CapyPDF, focus on providing functionality while leaving the interpretation of text sequences and metadata to client applications. The discussion showcases the intricacies involved in text representation in PDFs and the need for careful handling of text elements for proper rendering and functionality.
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4 commentsLigatures might look beautiful, but my brain just says "nope, I don't know this symbol" and refuses to process it in a meaningful way.
The Ts operator (sets text rise, ie changes the baseline) could be useful here. Text selection in PDF readers may even treat text with different text rise as being on the same line.
> We could specify kerning manually with a custom translation matrix that translates the rendering location by the amount needed. There are two main downsides to this. First of all it would mean that instead of having a stream of glyphs to render, you'd need to define 9 floating point numbers (actually 6 due to reasons) between every pair of glyphs.
Or use Td... 2 numbers.
Digital information is relatively new compared to print.. which is relatively new compared to human history. So there is some overlap in communication, language, style and accuracy challenges. Print is not dead! but not the focus so much on an online forum.
PDF the document definition is sort of a mess really, but here it is. Obviously Adobe Systems is not going to save everyone. great to see this writeup here today.
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