How do I select text while accounting for ligatures?

[Woodgnome]

ae.pdf

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The use case:

1. Extract text using IPXC_Page.GetText(null).GetChars(nFirstCharIndex, nCharsCount)
2. Do something with the extracted text (in this case parse the text and determine a word to highlight).
3. Highlight the word using the following code:

Code: Select all

IPXV_TextSelection textSelection = (IPXV_TextSelection)IPXV_Document.CreateStdSel((uint)IPXV_Inst.Str2ID("selection.text"));
IPXV_PageTextSelection pageTextSelection = textSelection.GetSel(pageIndex, true);
pageTextSelection.SelectChars(charIndex, length);
textSelection.OnAdd(IPXV_Document);
IPXV_Document.ActiveSel = textSelection;
textSelection.Show(true);

This works fine as long as GetText() is called with no parameters (i.e. leave ligatures as separate characters). I, however, am interested in getting the text with ligatures, like so:

Code: Select all

IPXC_GetPageTextOptions getPageTextOptions = IPXC_Inst.CreateGetPageTextOptions(2);
getPageTextOptions.Flags = 2; // With ligatures
IPXC_Page.GetText(getPageTextOptions).GetChars(nFirstCharIndex, nCharsCount);

When I use the text with ligatures this way, the indices for the characters no longer match those of the select methods if the text actually contains ligatures.

For example:

• Text with separate characters: "Jeg spiser aebler"
  • I want to select the word "aebler", so I select with charIndex = 11 and length = 6. Works fine
• Text with ligatures: "Jeg spiser æbler"
  • I want to select the word "æbler", so I select with charIndex = 11 and length = 5. This incorrectly selects only the letters "æble".

How can I avoid this problem while still extracting the text with ligatures?

This is a made up example, but I've attached a PDF with ligatures. Attempting to highlight the word "ægtefæller" in the first line will cause the issue.

[Sasha - Tracker Dev Team]

Hello Woodgnome,

This setting should give you an idea why this behaves like that:

Cheers,
Alex

[Woodgnome]

As far as I can tell this setting only affects copying text from the viewer - not the programmatic extraction of text or setting selection.

See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIgeUEiEimg