Exported PDF on MacOS contains strange text

When I export to a PDF on MacOS, much of the text is fine, but sometimes parts of words look fine in the PDF but are incorrect when copying text.

For example, the following are footnotes from 1 Corinthians 1:10 and 1:13 (in the NIVUK):

a #e Greek word for brothers and sisters (adelphoi) refers here to believers, both men and women, as part of God’s family; also in verses 11 and 26; and in 2:1; 3:1; 4:6; 6:8; 7:24, 29; 10:1; 11:33; 12:1; 14:6, 20, 26, 39; 15:1, 6, 50, 58; 16:15, 20.

b #at is, Peter

Or, the first few words of 1 Corinthians 1:19:

19 For it is wri"en:

"#e Greek word" should be "The Greek word", "#at is" should be "That is" and "wri"en" should be "written". Has anyone experienced this before? Is it an issue with how I'm printing to PDF?

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Comments

JT (alabama24)

Jason - It took me a bit to understand your issue. Let me rephrase and let me know if I understand correctly:

When you export text from the NIVUK, the bible footnotes appear on the PDF as you would expect. However, when you go to copy the footnotes from the PDF, you see strange markings when you paste the text into a new document (i.e. in Microsoft Word). Is that right?

I can confirm these results. I don't know if this comes from the export into the PDF, or from the PDF copy/paste into Word. These results suggest to me some form of copy protection, but that is just a guess.

My question for you, however, is why are you taking the step of creating the PDF? Why not just copy & paste directly from Logos? I do not see these results when coming directly from Logos.

Danfeng Zhang

Hi JT, thanks for your reply. Yes, you've mostly understood my issue correctly. The only additional part is that it's not only in footnotes, it's also in the body text (the example I gave from the first few words of 1 Corinthians 1:19).

The reason I convert to PDF is so that I can read them on my iPad and annotate with the Apple Pencil. The reason I care about how the text is stored in the PDF is that I highlight in a PDF reader on my iPad and I'd like to be able to search my annotations.

Hopefully that makes sense, let me know if not.

MJ. Smith

May be a red herring as I'm not a Mac person, but does the ipad assume unicode?

Danfeng Zhang

I assume the iPad assumes Unicode

Honestly, I don't know for sure but I'd be very surprised to find out that the iPad used any other character set.

JT (alabama24)

May be a red herring as I'm not a Mac person, but does the ipad assume unicode?

An iPad is not a Mac. [:P]

When I tested this, I only used Logos for Mac, “Preview” (built in Mac .pdf viewer) and Word for Mac. FWIW - I have seen things like this in PDFs, unrelatedly to Logos.

Bradley Grainger (Logos)

PDF is a "display format"; it's designed to look correct on screen and in print. It's not a general-purpose data exchange format.

My guess is that some ligatures, while looking correct on-screen, are getting converted to an unexpected character when you copy them. Since (to the best of my knowledge), Logos 8 is just using the built-in PDF-creation features of macOS to do the export, I'm not sure that this is a problem we can easily fix.

Bradley Grainger (Logos)

I just tested to see what happens on Windows with the "Microsoft Print to PDF" driver; it turns out that none of the text is selectable in the PDF that's created. (As I said, it's just a display format.)

J. Remington Bowling

The reason I convert to PDF is so that I can read them on my iPad and annotate with the Apple Pencil. The reason I care about how the text is stored in the PDF is that I highlight in a PDF reader on my iPad and I'd like to be able to search my annotations.

One possible alternative:

Export to Word instead. Microsoft Word has an inking feature that works on the iOS apps as well as the Surface products. Or you could move it from Word to OneNote, which has some advantages.

Or, alternatively, Faithlife could supporting inking!

Danfeng Zhang

Thanks for your reply, Bradley. It does look to be an issue with ligatures. Maybe if I install a different PDF printer I could get different results?

Also thank you for your suggestion J. Remington Bowling.