Can't search the PDF file. Really? Still? After 5 years???

["Hart, Geoff" <Geoff-H -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA>]

Emily Berk reports: <<I got a Word document from a Korean co-worker and put
its contents into my FrameMaker files.  When I generate a PDF from them --
it looks great, but is not searchable.  I've generated 3 other PDFs this
morning in the same FM session (all using File, Print, Adobe Distiller and
then double-clicking the .ps file) and all of those are searchable so it's
not the general FM or distiller  or Acrobat settings, I suspect.>>

I'm betting that "Korean" is the clue that will explain your problem. I work
with many Asian authors, and they most often use "localized" versions of
their software that include (among other things) fonts not used by North
American versions of the software. These fonts don't always translate into a
form you can use painlessly, and as a result, much of the text they produce
(and particularly so in Acrobat) poses fairly intractable problems for users
of standard American versions of the software. For example, I often get
Japanese Acrobat files with the graphics intact but all the text missing and
thus unprintable (and unsearchable).

The long-term solution--and what solved my problems with the Japanese
files--is to install an Asian languages pack, which is available for both
Word (from Microsoft) and Acrobat (from Adobe). Search for these terms on
their Web sites and you'll find the download, which is reasonably painless
to install.

Unfortunately, if you stick with the Asian fonts, you have to install these
language files on every computer that will be reading the files. That's
usually not feasible, and definitely represents a poor design choice on
Adobe's part--I understand why they did it this way (not everyone wants to
install all those extra fonts), but they've created more problems than
installing the fonts would solve. The short-term solution is to return to
your Word file and set it to use only the North American fonts. If you're
lucky, simply redefining the font choices in your document's style
definitions will solve the problem painlessly, but be warned that you may
have to look through the file to ensure that no special characters were
incorrectly converted as a result of this switch.

--Geoff Hart, geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
(try ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca if you get no response)
Forest Engineering Research Institute of Canada
580 boul. St-Jean
Pointe-Claire, Que., H9R 3J9 Canada 

"I have always wished that my computer would be as easy to use as my
telephone. My wish has come true. I no longer know how to use my
telephone."--Bjarne Stroustrup (originator of C++ programming language)

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