Why is selecting/highlighting text here impossible?

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mattad
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Why is selecting/highlighting text here impossible?

Post by mattad »

Assume I visit (e..g with Chrome browser) the following page:

https://www.ghacks.net/2018/04/02/cloud ... t-1-1-1-1/

Now I print this page with one of the popular pdf printers into a pdf file.

Then I load this pdf afterwards into XChange Viewer and want to highllight some text (or mark it for copying).

But this is not possible.

Why?

Which CSS statement prevents the later selection of text?

Matt
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Will - Tracker Supp
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Re: Why is selecting/highlighting text here impossible?

Post by Will - Tracker Supp »

Hi Matt,

Thanks for the email - This is because when printing from Chrome, the content is rasterized and so becomes an image, no actual text is in the document. You would need to use the Document --> OCR Pages feature.

Thanks,
If posting files to this forum, you must archive the files to a ZIP, RAR or 7z file or they will not be uploaded.
Thank you.

Best regards

Will Travaglini
Tracker Support (Europe)
Tracker Software Products Ltd.
http://www.tracker-software.com
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Bhikkhu Pesala
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Re: Why is selecting/highlighting text here impossible?

Post by Bhikkhu Pesala »

If I choose Save as PDF for the PDF, then the text is rendered as text.

I use Vivaldi browser, which is based on the Chromium rendering engine, so I assume that Chrome has the same option.
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Tracker Supp-Stefan
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Re: Why is selecting/highlighting text here impossible?

Post by Tracker Supp-Stefan »

Thanks Bhikkhu,

Yes - if you "Save as" - the file will be saved with text in it. When the 'print' command is used however - Chrome vectorizes all the input, so no matter which driver is used - the result will always be without actual text in the PDF file generated.

Regards,
Stefan
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