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Lowex
Lowex
Participant
September 26, 2018
Answered

Strange characters, when making a PDF from a website

  • September 26, 2018
  • 1 reply
  • 2257 views

Dear all,

I have the following problem. When I try to convert a certain website (click here) all the "st" combinations turn in to a st like this. Of course I started googling, how to fix this problem and I learned it's called a ligature. Unfortunately I couldn't figure out how to fix it, that is why I'm here. How can I deal with these ligature? How can I just get a normal "st"?

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer Lowex

Hi Lowex,

That's a good guess (the add-on).

You mentioned that you are using FireFox. One of the things that I do when something is strange within a browser is to try different browsers (Safari, Chrome, Opera). Have you tried them as well?

Also, and I know you probably do not want to hear this, but how many links are there that you'd have to reset within the document as opposed to how many ligatures you'd have to reset.

Oh, I just thought of one other rather complex way to do this but it does require that you have InDesign: get a good copy without the ligature, Export that into Word document. Import the Word document* into InDesign and within ID you can automatically create all HTML links to functional links then convert it back into a PDF. Yeah, very very convoluted but in a "worst case scenario."

*Note: I know that within Word you can have it do the automatic html-links but I'm not all that knowledgeable on how to export that into functional links to PDF.


Hi Gary,

First of all I would like to say thank you for your time, I really appreciate it.

Second, I think I fixed the problem. For some reason I only got ligatures on that page and the only difference was the font used there. So I downloaded the fonts “noto sans” and “noto serif” which were used on this page and now the ligatures are gone.

1 reply

gary_sc
Community Expert
gary_scCommunity Expert
Community Expert
September 26, 2018

Hi Lowex,

Can you give us a hint as to where this ligature is? I opened the document and converted it into a PDF but it's a long document and I'm not all that interested in scrolling down every line to look for this letter combination.

That notwithstanding, my first guess is to go into Edit within Acrobat, be sure you are in the Edit option, select the errant letters and retype what you want.

By the way, you will need Acrobat to do this, not Adobe Reader. You didn't mention what version or kind of Acrobat you are using.

I hope this helps, let us know...

Lowex
LowexAuthor
Participant
September 27, 2018

Hi Gary,

Every non-capital "st" combination on the website turns in to this (st) ligature, See image below. I'm using Adobe Acrobat Pro DC, version: 2018..011.20063. I thought about replacing all those ligatures by editing the pdf, but this page is only an example. The actual page is way bigger and undoable to replace one by one. Is there a way Acrobat doesn't convert it to a ligature, but keeps the original "st"?

Website "st" combinations marked:

oDqtTx.jpg

gary_sc
Community Expert
gary_scCommunity Expert
Community Expert
September 27, 2018

Hi Lowex,

A couple of things and your inquiry shows up a couple of inadequacies of Acrobat Pro. If you do a Find and Replace, Acrobat can only search on whole words not part of words but can do a replace. To get the ability to search on a partial word you need to use the full search capability which can search for two letters, you cannot replace.

On the other hand, when I processed that document you referred to, I did not get any ligature for the "st" combination. This leads me to ask that since this is a document in German, are you converting this document with Acrobat setting for looking for German words? I'd like to send you the document that I have on my computer but unfortunately this website does not allow for PDF documents to be sent. The best I can do is to show you the same page that you show above without any ligatures.

I should add that despite a big search, I could not find out how to manually create the "st" ligature. I'm no a Mac and if you can tell me the secret sauce I'd appreciate! I do not know that not all fonts have this character but even with those that do I cannot create it.

We continue....

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