InDesign kerning and tracking converted to white space when exporting to PDF

Hi Javier and Joel,

hm, after some more tests I think, that I have two solutions.

The second one is the technical "cleaner" one, but it not very flexible.

Depending on the amount of used fonts it could be also costly.

Suggestion 1:

[ 1 ] Convert the text with the tracked characters to outlines

[ 2 ] Stacked below the editable text with no tracking and blanks.

Fill color: 1% Yellow.

Width of the characters changed so the width is the same as the tracked and outlined characters.

Here with fill color 100% Yellow so that you can see the setup:

Exported PDF with PDF Tags enabled:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/3dc16maxwsyuooi/ProductKeysWithTracking-3-TagsEnabled.pdf?dl=1

With this kind of PDF I can select all the text on page 1 and copy/paste it to my text editor without white spaces. Also with the PDF viewer in my Firefox browser. Test with other PDF viewing apps. *

Suggestion 2:

Have a specical font for the tracked numbers and characters where all the character have a very wide side bearing on the right of the character. So technically spoken there is no tracking and no white space. Apply the font with a GREP style; just like you apply the tracking right now.

You could build such a font e.g. out of InDesign with the IndyFont script written by Jongware and Marc Autret:

https://www.indiscripts.com/category/projects/IndyFont

Of course also check the EULA of your fonts if you are allowed to do this.

Regards,
Uwe Laubender
( Adobe Community Professional )

* EDITED

Late thought: would it be too clumsy to double up the number: one visible with the tracking-spacing the client wants, followed by a 'hidden' number with no spacing or tracking, but colored None or White so it's invisible? And given a very small font size? The search would be a little odd in that it would select what looks like a tiny block next to the number, but that could be tweaked, and hitting Ctrl-C would still copy the right number.

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Javier said:

"Also using any PDF reader app other than Acrobat gives same results. Conclusion: there is no way to avoid the creation of white space characters when using certain tracking values in ANY application. ""

Hi Javier,

well, that is definitely true.

Any PDF viewing application will not fit your needs.

We now have a way that is working with Adobe Reader or Acrobat Pro DC.

On Windows and on MacOS.

Regards,
Uwe Laubender

( ACP )

Brad said: "It's purely how the VIEWER interprets it."

Exactly!

If I open my tagged PDF in the PDF viewer of my Firefox browser on Windows 10 and copy/paste text from it there are always blank characters in the result when a specific amount of tracking is applied.

Regards,
Uwe Laubender
( Adobe Community Professional )

I have come to the same conclusion as Uwe.

It is not InDesign. It's Acrobat's re-interpretation of the content based on what it "sees". It sees spaces.

HOWEVER, If you check "Tagged", it will work. BUT ONLY IN ACROBAT. If you use a different viewer, it may not work.

In my example, I added a line where the entire thing was tracked excessively. I exported Postscript from the file and there are NO spaces in there except where you purposefully placed them in Line 2. The resulting PDF is also fine, there are no spaces in the PDF code. It's purely how the VIEWER interprets it.

In my example below, the first image is a Tagged PDF viewed in Acrobat, searching for BB890. It properly returns everything except the 2nd line.

The second example is the same file opened in Mac Preview; It only picks up the result from the first and last line.

As far as what you can do to make this work the way you want, I don't have any concrete ideas right now, outside of some sort of visual separation, like different text colours for each part of the number.

"We thought the inclusion of tracking was the best solution: it adds a visual separation that enhances code comprehension but does not create white spaces, so you still can find the correct serial number typing it as is. It works like a charm inside InDesign but no way to make it work when exporting to PDF.

Hi Javier,

then I would suggest to do two versions of the document.

One PDF for print where the serial numbers have the tracking values and one for the web or for other internal uses where the tracking is not present.

Regards,
Uwe Laubender
( Adobe Community Professional )

"The question is: how can we "avoid" the creation of a white space when using tranking values upon PDF creation? Or maybe it's a defect of the rendering process (I understand a PDF is a PostScript file, and that PostScript is so old that it need a real white space to asign a width value...) that adds a real white space in order to represent it in a PDF viewer?"

Hi Javier,

PDFs are exported like that. You want the white space visible, the PDF is showing the white space. It does not insert any white space characters that are not typed, I think. It's building strings of characters with the same formatting and it gives an instruction for the renderer and other internal functions of the reader to start the rendering at a given point.

If you now copy text of a product reference instance from the PDF, the PDF reading software is or could be intelligent enough to automatically substitute the horizontal difference from one character to another with a white space character. Even if the string of characters technically has no white space character at all. I see this also with large tracking values applied to text in inDesign.

You can dive deep into the PDF to show this using Acrobat Pro and its Preflight tools.

Go to Print Production > Preflight > Options > Browse Internal PDF Structure…

and inspect the Contents stream of a given page.

Here one sample where I set your sample product reference in different ways.

Top line without any white space character.

Below using white space characters.

Next line with tracking 200 on some of the characters.

Bottom line with tracking 300 on the same characters.

The same document page exported to PDF/X-4, opened in Acrobat Pro and inspected with Preflight.

I did the yellow marking in PhotoShop so that you can easily see where the PDFs code is using positioning data and where it does real white space characters:

When I search after 12345JJ67BB890 in Adobe Reader only the first line will be found.

The second line would be very unlikely because of the real white space characters.

The bottom lines, well, the algorithm does not find them even if there are no white space characters at all.

My guess: the reading mechanism tries to make sense of the contents stream by sometimes guessing white space and line breaks. Even sometimes guessing the flow of whole paragraphs. You may ask what can be done about that in the Acrobat forum:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/acrobat/ct-p/ct-acrobat?page=1&sort=latest_replies&lang=all&tabid=all

Regards,
Uwe Laubender
( Adobe Community Professional )

I'm not having the same experience. I just created a similar document (manually adding either tracking value, or kerning value), and it works just fine in my PDF.

If I search for JJ67 In Acrobat, it selects the entire word perfectly. My PDF is not treating the "gaps" as spaces.

So I wonder what's different about yours. Try this: When you open your PDF in Illustrator, has the "gap" become an actual space? or has it been broken up into chunks? or is it honouring the tracking? In my case, it's honouring the tracking.

Can you post a sample?

I'm sure you know your project and needs and what works for you, but my first impression is that you are overthinking/overworking this step, maybe from a chain of "correcting corrections" that's so easy to get into.

I don't think I've ever had tracking/spacing issues in PDF export from ID, and I've done many complex catalog/datasheet/product list sorts of documents. All things being equal, your layout in ID should appear almost exactly the same in PDF.

If from a clean, un-tweaked layout (turn off the GREP styles, etc.) you don't get an acceptable spacing for those product numbers in both ID and PDF, it may be a font issue, or a choice of metric/optical tracking, or something more fundamental than hard spacing between characters.

I'd suggest a little experimentation from a new, clean layout to validate the minimum amount of 'fixing' needed to get the desired layout in PDF. Try similar/replacement fonts as well.

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