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• • December 5, 2009 at 9:01 pm #54147
    wf1041

    Member

    When creating PDF from InDesign CS4, discretionary hyphens seem to be transformed to very small spaces.

    When exporting text from this PDF to XML using Acrobat, these small spaces are interpreted as normal spaces if the PDF was created using the Print menu. Words containing discretionary hyphens are thus separated into syllables. Results are thus unusable if you want to extract words.

    If the PDF was created using the Export function, small spaces seem to occur in PDF as well; subsequent XML extraction, however, ignores them so words containing discretionary hyphens are extracted correctly.

    Is this a feature or a bug?

  • December 6, 2009 at 4:24 am #54149
    David Blatner

    Keymaster

    It sounds like a bug to me, but I've never tried that. In general, however, I strongly recommend that people use File > Export to create PDF files from InDesign.

    • June 9, 2017 at 7:11 am #95260
      Anonymous

      Inactive

      If we create the PDF using Export option also still it showing space wherever discretionary hypen used in indesign

  • December 8, 2009 at 1:38 am #54169
    Dwayne Harris

    Member

    I've seen similar things. We had a company who was re-purposing our PDFs and and they were getting things like that. I think it ended up being their workflow and that they had some older version of Acrobat or something.

    But while in the same vein, I have witnessed a lot of RTF files (exported from ID) where the discretionary hyphens have turned into regular hyphens.

  • June 9, 2017 at 9:45 am #95269
    David Blatner

    Keymaster

    Another thing to consider: Do you have “Tagged Text” enabled when exporting? Many of the typical Acrobat export problems people have come from their text not being tagged.

  • June 9, 2017 at 10:10 pm #95274
    Anonymous

    Inactive

    Thanks for your response

    While creating pdf through export option I enabled the Tagged pdf, but still it create space where discretionary hypen used, if we copy and paste the text in notepad space will appear between the word. please guide us how to fix this issue, because we are doing epub based on the pdf received from print team.

    They are not facing any issue in print product, if we reuse the pdf (extracting) we are facing this issue.

  • June 14, 2017 at 12:11 am #95382
    Anonymous

    Inactive

    Any luck on above issues?

  • June 14, 2017 at 10:32 am #95392
    Lindsey Martin

    Member

    I tested this on Mac OS 10.11.6 with ID CC 2017 and on Windows 7 with ID CS4 (6.0.6), exporting using standard ‘High Quality Print’. I checked the PDFs using Acrobat Pro DC on Mac and and Acrobat Reader DC on Windows and couldn’t see any spurious spaces. But, when I opened the test files in Illustrator (CS4 on Windows; CC 2017 on Mac) it is clear that there are spurious characters in the PDF. In both cases, there appears to be a series of end-of-paragraph marks where the discretionary hyphen was. In Illustrator, I couldn’t get the cursor to run past the hidden characters in either direction nor could I select them.

    I could select and copy the passage in using Acrobat Pro DC on Mac and and Acrobat Reader DC on Windows. Pasting into WordPad showed no anomalies but, when I pasted into BBEdit, there was an extra line return at the end of the word with the discretionary hyphen. Very odd.

    Looks like a bug to me and I’m surprised it has persisted so long. For the nonce, the only solution for you I can think of is to eliminate discretionary hyphens in the source file, which may not be feasible.

  • June 20, 2017 at 6:21 am #95571
    Anonymous

    Inactive

    Martin

    Thanks for your reply. So shall we conclude its bug in Indesign for a long time?

  • June 20, 2017 at 1:59 pm #95583
    Lindsey Martin

    Member

    It’s a bug and appears to be of long standing. But, it might be better to call it an edge case. I suspect that at Adobe discretionary hyphens were supposed not to affect the display in PDF and, since there was no outcry that this was not the case, the odd behaviour under the hood upon export from ID was ignored, especially since I doubt many people now produce PDF from ID using Print. Your exporting PDFs to XML exposed the oddity when you did.

    Did you file a bug report with Adobe? Feel free to use my post above if you do.

    Have you tried exporting the passage to XML or EPUB directly from ID? I meant to do so but havn’t yet had the time.

  • July 3, 2017 at 2:44 am #95805
    Anonymous

    Inactive

    Hi All

    If we use the export option for creating PDF above said issue was fixed. But if we place Indesign file or PDF as link in Indesign file, and create export PDF that discretionary hypen turned into space between the word.

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