Copy-paste from .pdf produces weird characters

Question

Level 6

14,850 points

Copy-paste from .pdf produces weird characters

Copy-pasting some formulas from the page below yields weird characters (macOS 14 Safari, Firefox, Preview.app, Windows 10 Edge).

For example, in the beginning of the page the formula for the area and volume of a sphere is "􏰀􏰁4π􏰂􏰃; 􏰄􏰁43π􏰂􏰅" when pasting to BBEdit 15 or LibreOffice writer 24.

Those two first characters seem to be:

􏰀

PRIVATE USE AREA-10FC00

Unicode: U+10FC00, UTF-8: F4 8F B0 80

􏰁

PRIVATE USE AREA-10FC01

Unicode: U+10FC01, UTF-8: F4 8F B0 81

Does that .pdf use some uncommon unicode characters? Is it possible to copy-paste and view them correctly maybe by installing a font (Last Resort maybe)? Or does it display the formulas as graphics, not as copyable text? I heard that a few months ago copy-paste from that page worked correctly so maybe it was updated after that.

https://www.laaketieteelliset.fi/site/files/kaavaliite_2024.pdf

In Safari, Firefox and in Preview.app the formulas display OK:

Mac mini

Posted on May 19, 2024 10:09 AM

Reply

Answer 1

Kurt Lang

Level 9

58,782 points

May 19, 2024 12:10 PM in response to Matti Haveri

These are the fonts embedded in the PDF:

Calibri

Cambria

Cambria-Bold

Cambria-Italic

SymbolMT

TimesNewRomanPS-BoldMT

Of these, the one you need in particular is SymbolMT. The MT stands for Monotype. Any other version of Symbol won't work correctly.

Reply

Answer 2

Matti Haveri Author

Level 6

14,850 points

May 20, 2024 10:50 AM in response to Kurt Lang

Thanks for the info.

I am asking this to help a student taking an exam. I heard that a few months ago copy-paste from that page worked so it might have changed now for the worse. It seems SymbolMT is not freely available and I wonder why that site now uses such rare font in their tutor pages. Another related site even advices the user to make sure they can copy the formulas from the .pdf before going to the exam. But maybe the choice for good math symbol fonts is limited so they had to make this change.

Reply