[reportlab-users] Reportlab text not searchable in Apple OSX Preview.App? but searchable in Acrobat and google-pdf viewer ?

[Robin Becker]

hari jayaram wrote:

> Hmm..so It seems that Preview.App can only find things that are

> partially-rotated or entirely un-rotated.

> 

> The only reason I am rotating the canvas to render the text is because I

> want to generate the PDF in a landscape sense (see

> http://github.com/harijay/protein-crystallization-gridmaker/blob/1ca03fd8aa85cd18b93ac63ff6447199d9799dcb/example1.pdf

> )

> 

> Is there a simpler way to achieve "landscape" rendering  than rotating the

> canvas.  Maybe that way may be Preview.App friendly.

> 

> I have written to  one of the apple support discussion lists asking them why

> Preview treats the PDF differently from every other PDF-reader out there

> where search works..Lets see if I hear back from the Preview team.

> 

> Thanks everyone for your emails..

> Hari

> 

> 

........
It seems that preview is actually looking at the rendered image to find the 
characters. If the characters are in a string left to right the the words get 
recognised as contiguous. Displaying vertical text no matter how achieved would 
seem to bust the algorithm. Peter's partial recog may be because the letters are 
somewhat contiguous left to right.
-- 
Robin Becker