Re:Show HN: I made a simple PDF text editor
by mehrdadn on Sunday May 31, 2020 @10:24AM
(#23369760)
One of the weirdest things I've seen is a PDF where the text is complete gibberish if you copy paste, but perfect if you export it to HTML or Word in Acrobat. Never figured out how or why that might happen.
[ Parent
| on HN ]
I read somewhere (likely here) that this oddness comes from the idea that PDF is a way of structuring documents for print first, and presentation in a user interface is secondary.
That the rendering of the document on screen is paramount as opposed to ability to manipulate the text itself. "These characters should be displayed at this position in the document precisely"
It would make sense that exporting the document as HTML or Word would make this easier - as these document formats have different goals.