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Create Searchable PDF Text


Guest Hanna

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There are several questions contained in this post:

 

I am using AutoCAD 2000 to create postscripts. To create the postscripts I plot-to-file using the PostScript Level 1 plot driver that I created with the AutoCAD Add-A-Plotter Wizard. I then use Adobe Distiller 4.0 to convert the postscripts into PDF format. When I open these PDFs in Adobe Acrobat 4.0 I cannot edit them, or search for text.

 

Question 1: Does anyone know how I can create my postscripts so that the text is searchable in the PDF?

 

P.S. (no pun intended): I am using the Windows 2000 OS.

 

If you want to go deeper into the issue, read on:

I believe I have it narrowed down to a font problem. Currently we use the AutoCAD txt.shx font. If I change the fonts to the TrueText courier.ttf font and plot-to-file using a plot driver called Adobe PDFWriter (which automatically converts the post-scripts to PDF), then I can search the PDF for text, as long as the text is in the courier font. However, if I use the PostScript Level 1 driver or Adobe Distiller to convert the postscripts to PDF, then I cannot search for any text, even the text that uses the True Type courier font. Also, the really important part of the documents (the engineering diagrams), look horrible when converted with PDFWriter.

 

Question 2: Does anyone know why the postscript/PDF created with the PDFWriter driver is searchable, but the postscript/PDF created with the AutoCAD driver is not?

 

Question 3: Is there a way to make the plot driver or Distiller recognize txt.shx as a font, so I don’t have to convert my many drawings into courier?

 

Any help on this matter would be greatly appreciated! Thank you! :)

 

- Hanna

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My guess would be that the AutoCAD .SHX fonts are treated as geometry when they are plotted to PostScript whereas the .TTF fonts retain their ascii character codes. If this is true, you will need to change all your SHX text to TTF. The easiest way to do this is to redefine the text style using a different font. Ideally, find a TTF font that looks the same as the TXT.SHX AutoCAD font. I don't know of one but I can't believe that one doesn't exist.

 

Maybe someone else out there can give a more definitive answer.

 

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I had a feeling that I would be converting all the fonts. *Sigh.* :) Thank you for your quick response, I appreciate the help!

 

"CADTutor - the best free tutorials on the web... definitely!"

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