Turning ligatures off within a PDF?

[Gregg]

Wondering if it is possible to turn off ligatures within a PDF, using either Acrobat Pro or Pitstop. Any ideas?

Thanks in advance.

 

[leonardr]

Wondering if it is possible to turn off ligatures within a PDF, using either Acrobat Pro or Pitstop. Any ideas?
Thanks in advance.

Unlike authoring tools, a PDF does not dynamically select glyphs when it renders. All glyphs are selected by the authoring/production tool and embedded accordingly into the PDF.

What sort of problem are you having with ligatures??

 

[art-tonermax]

Ligatures are a property of the document, not the Reader. I guess what you want is that, if a document was made with ligatures, Reader recognises this and copies an alternative to the clipboard.

I've seen Reader do this where the ligature has no equivalent on the platform (e.g. "fi" on Windows) but there are no controls.

 

[leonardr]

Ligatures are a property of the document, not the Reader.

If the case of PDF, that is true. For other formats, such as MSWord or InDesign, it's the reverse.

I guess what you want is that, if a document was made with ligatures, Reader recognises this and copies an alternative to the clipboard. I've seen Reader do this where the ligature has no equivalent on the platform (e.g. "fi" on Windows) but there are no controls.

Actually, the PDF itself has controls. When a ligature is placed in a PDF, the producing tool can choose to provide a non-ligature alternative or not. If provided, that is what will be placed on the clipboard. If not, then the original ligature is. That's as per the PDF standard. Nothing special going on in Reader.

 

[kaiserwilhelm]

We created a script that turns off ligatures in all text styles prior to output.