From: JimDiamond@jdvb.ca   
      
   On 2023-06-12 at 03:04 ADT, Mike Spencer  wrote:   
   >   
   > Back in March, I complained that the version of xpdf distributed with   
   > Slackware 15 was hard-coded to use CUPS and would only "print to file"   
   > under lprng, a problem for which I still have no fix.   
   >   
   > Now I've discovered further brain damage.   
   >   
   > The search facility is, depending on how you look at it, either too   
   > stupid or too smart.  Reading an article on complexity, searching for   
   > the name of Stuart Kauffman by last name failed.  Nope, sorry, no   
   > mention of "Kauffman" in this document.  Paging down to the footnotes,   
   > there was Kauffman's name.  But even with the text of his name   
   > displayed on the screen, search for it failed.   
   >   
   > It's because the authors (or their software) used a code point for the   
   > "ff" ligature and xpdf insists that you search for that datum,   
   > unwilling to accommodate the fact that no one types "ff" ligature into   
   > a search pane.  If I use the mouse to copy and paste the "ff" from   
   > Kauffman into the search pane, xpdf finds it fine.   
   >   
   > How many of the other commonly used "fi", "fl", "ffi"   
   > and "ffl" ligatures are going to impede searching?  And there are   
   > others less commonly seen such as "st".   
   >   
   > Yes, I see that there's stuff in the man pages about text encoding.   
   > Is it worth hours of my time to figure out a lot of stuff about   
   > unicode mapping?  I don't see anything about how that would affect   
   > search.   
   >   
   > I think I have to find some other way to deal with PDF files.   
      
   Mike,   
      
   xpdf is pretty rudimentary in a lot of ways.  Have you considered   
   installing evince (there is a SlackBuild for it)?   
      
   Or... Notwithstanding the fact that the final version of acroread has some   
   security bugs, I use acroread when I have no reason to be suspicious of the   
   PDF.  To do this on Slackware64 you need to install Alien Bob's   
   compatibility stuff, but with that it works fine for me.   
      
   To evince's credit, it found words with ffl, fl and ff ligatures in a   
   document I created with TeX.  Acroread did not find those (even when I   
   copied and pasted the word into the search box).  Other ligatures are left   
   as exercises to the diligent student.   
      
   But at least acroread will print to file for me (I use cups, not sure what   
   would happen if I was a lprng guy).   
      
   If you want to try installing acroread and need any help, feel free to   
   reply here or directly, as you prefer.   
      
                                       Jim   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)