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MusicalCervid
MusicalCervid
Participant
July 12, 2023
Question

How does one merge fragmented text fields? Among other questions.

  • July 12, 2023
  • 1 reply
  • 344 views

Back at it again with wrestling PDF troubles-- basically I managed to recompile an epub into a pdf using it's exported xhtml files (was quite the process), however testing out the text has brought up yet another issue: each and every glyph had somehow become individual text boxes as opposed to regularly formated paragraphs. While this may not be necessarily an issue, even with the power taxing refreshing of pages when darting through pages, it is a huge issue when I have to search for specific words by spelling them backwards for whatever ridiculous reason.

Let me explain: From recent inspections, this isn't an issue with the source file, infact upon converting it with a rather meek, but sort of useful epub viewer, I'm able to get it to display the paragraphs properly; no textbox for every letter and/or symbol/number. However said conversion seems to screw the poodle hard on encoding(?), as while the text appears to be in English (not even a visual anomally in formatting), upon copying an excerpt from said paragraph(s) reveals something along the lines of "-2"2',G"E*-("(101)#$".

If I had to guess, this could be a cause of some muss up in encoding conversion. I am running out of ideas at this point, and I cannot see myself trying to copy and paste all the text and formatting it. What can be done, whether it's my initial issue or the encoding junk? I will provide a screenshot of the "fragmented text" below. Any and all help is greatly appreciated and I look forward to your responses!!

"The Definitve Visual History" seen here is seperated, letter by letter.

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    1 reply

    gary_sc
    Community Expert
    gary_scCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    July 12, 2023

    Hi, @MusicalCervid, a quick answer on your question: I do not know if that's possible.

     

    However, when I've had issues converting one document format to another document format, I export the original into either Word or, if there are scrambled fonts and mixed styles, I export the document to a .txt document (with no styles). Then, I reformat the document from scratch in either a word processing application (e.g., Word), or a page layout application (e.g., InDesign). I've found that that is must faster and easier than trying to do it the way one would think a computer should be able to do such operations.

     

    The important thing to keep in mind is that Acrobat is neither a word processing application nor a page layout application any more than a printer could possibly be. Acrobat is a digital document reader with extra features. Once you accept the full limitations (despite Adobe's hype), you will sleep easier.

     

    Good luck!

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