Adding a PDF does not preserve page image

[jfontana]

I'm importing a PDF that has some phonetic characters. When I add the PDF to my project the image (probably this is not the right term but I think you can understand what I mean) of these characters is not preserved. I enclose a screenshot of the PDF as seen when I open it using Acrobat Reader and another one showing what the relevant text looks like when I import the PDF into my document in Afinity Publisher. What I see is the underlying text (i.e. what I would get if I do copy/paste from the PDF). I'd like to import the PDF and see it as I see it when I open it with a PDF viewer.  What am I doing wrong?

 

[Old Bruce]

Could be that the font you have for the Affinity application does not have the various glyphs.

[jfontana]

Thanks for your quick answer Bruce! That's possible but how does one go about making sure Affinity has all the necessary glyphs?

These characters are all part of UTF-8. I cannot predict which symbols will appear in the texts I import. It would be very time consuming to go through the texts and identifying all of those non-standard characters. 

[walt.farrell]

You could Place the PDF page, and select Passthrough mode on the Context Toolbar.

[thomaso]

1 hour ago, jfontana said:

It would be very time consuming to go through the texts and identifying all of those non-standard characters. 

The Font Manager can support you with a search for affected text frames with missing fonts, respectively unsupported characters.
Also the Find & Replace panel can be useful with its Format search option to replace certain styles.

[jfontana]

Thanks again, guys. This is really not a matter of fonts, I think. Basically what I need is to import the PDF so that the pages are imported as images not as the text that (if I'm not mistaken, is below the image that is rendered on the screen).

Walt's solution seems to be the right one because when I do 'place' what is inserted is the image of the PDF with the characters visible the way I want them. Except that I don't know how to 'place' all of the images for all of the pages inside the document I'm trying to create. If I do File > Place and choose the PDF document I'm trying to import, only one image (of the first page) is inserted. The PDF I'm trying to insert is kind of long and having to insert it page by page would be a bit of a pain. 

JM

[thomaso]

6 minutes ago, jfontana said:

Basically what I need is to import the PDF so that the pages are imported as images not as the text

If you don't want to edit the PDF you should indeed not open but place it instead. As Walt pointed out this is the way to make it appear as it is.

8 minutes ago, jfontana said:

The PDF I'm trying to insert is kind of long and having to insert it page by page would be a bit of a pain. 

Instead of placing a PDF page by page (which requires first to split it into a set of single page PDFs) you can copy the placed object or copy its Affinity page and choose from the "Spread" pulldown menu the various pages. Yes, for many pages it is still kind of cumbersome.

[jfontana]

Thanks Thomaso. The problem is that I still don't understand how you can get all of the pages you have 'placed' distributed across the pages in the document you want to create. When I choose a page from the "Spread" pulldown menu only one page is placed and then the menu disappears. Is there a manual or user guide with instructions on how to use 'place'?

[thomaso]

https://affinity.help/publisher/English.lproj/index.html?page=pages/Media/placeImages.html?title=Placing content

Unfortunately there is no feature to place all pages of a multi page PDF. Although when placing several files (e.g. jpgs) an extra panel appears giving you a little more overview this does not work for PDF because you can't place more than 1 of its pages at a time – and there is no way to choose a different than the first page from the PDF to get placed.

So you could place the PDF once, then copy this frame or page and then adjust the displayed PDF page number an every instance. Indeed not comfortable.
Possible workaround: Export the PDF before placing into single files (with a PDF reader app that offers this feature). Then you can at least benefit from the ability to place more than 1 file at a time.

[jfontana]

Thomaso. Once again, thanks a lot for your enormous help. Your suggestion to split the PDF into individual pages and then place the aggregate of images allows me to do what I wanted to do much more comfortably. It is a bit of a pain to have to have to add the placed images one by one but I have seen that just clicking on the relevant page you get the relevant consecutive image pasted to the page. I don't know whether this is the right place to request additional features to the developers but being able to distribute all of the 'placed' images across individual blank pages in the document might be helpful to some users. 

One problem that I'm having is that when I click on the page to place the image the images don't snap into place. This is clearly because I'm an inexperienced user and I'm not doing things properly. I imagine there must be a way to fit the image into a given preassigned space on the page when you click on it (or afterwards) and I will try to find this information myself in the documentation if that is actually possible but the worse problem (and this has to be a bug rather than a feature because it is a bit annoying) is that when I use the 'move tool' to slide the image into place, the tab for the placed images totally disappears and I don't know how to find the placed images again. 

[thomaso]

Agree, placing several items is far too cumbersome, in particular for multi-page PDF.

Yes, if you change the tool or interrupt the placing process somehow then – for no reason – the placing cursor gets lost and, in case of several files, its according panel, too. There are just little options via modifier keys, they are mentioned in the main window's bottom line tool tips.

Please add your votes to this two Feature Requests linked below. Though the multi-page place-request is from 2018 we users have no other chance than requesting to possibly make it become true one day.