Strange behaviour with Corbel font.

[AWroe]

Hi guys,

This is my first post here so please be gentle!

I've created a book for a roleplaying game and done all the layout work with Publisher using Corbel as the font for all Body text. There are also a couple of other text styles which then use Body (style) as the basis. 

On exporting the PDF, everything looks absolutely fine. 

The problem I have only occurs when I try something I know most of my buyers will want to do, which needs a little explanation. 
Basically, the book is for a roleplaying game, and the Games Master will want to copy out some bits of information, character statistics as you can see above for example, for use at the table. The same also goes for Virtual Table Top software which allows online play of the game.
When I copy out the text from the PDF and paste into an editor (I've tried MS Word and Notepad) the numbers all turn into unrecognisable symbols. 
 

When I copy the text directly from Publisher, it works just fine.

Also, when I change the Typography setting for figures from Lining to Default or No Change, the numbers show when pasted from the PDF but their position and size is altered in Publisher and it just doesn't look right. The image below is snipped from Publisher:

I've tried the various settings in export for fonts to no avail. 

I really don't want to have to go back over 240 pages with a new font. Does anybody have any ideas?

Thanks,

Allan.

 

 

 

Edited September 16, 2022 by AWroe

[kenmcd]

Corbel has Oldstyle figures as the default figures.
So you must have enabled Lining figures in the Typography panel.
Apparently APub is not embedding those characters with the correct Unicode code behind them.
That is why when the text is copied you see the missing character symbol.

APub has issues when embedding text with various OpenType features enabled.
Which causes problems with copying text, searching text, screen readers, etc.
That is definitely a bug.

Could you please attach at least one page of the doc and the PDF to examine?

Your only option may be to change the font.
Change the styles, or do a Find/Replace on the font.

[AWroe]

Thanks for that @LibreTraining I've attached a chapter of the book. This is probably the chapter where the issue will impact the most as it's the game statistics for various enemies which Game Masters will want to extract. 

It seems odd that something as simple as the numbers in a font would cause such issues but there it is. 

I did have the idea of somehow setting the text style to use a different font for numbers. Do you know if that's possible?

Threat file only experiment.pdf

[walt.farrell]

12 minutes ago, LibreTraining said:

APub has issues when embedding text with various OpenType features enabled

Perhaps changing the PDF export settings to not subset the fonts would help? That fixes some issues with ligatures, and might help here.

[AWroe]

12 minutes ago, LibreTraining said:

Corbel has Oldstyle figures as the default figures.
So you must have enabled Lining figures in the Typography panel.

Based on this statement, the default position for some numbers, 4 for example, is that the base of the figure is on the text line and the 'tail' is below. That means Lining is forcing the number to look as it does. Which is what I wanted. But then this probably means I chose the wrong font from the start.

[AWroe]

2 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

Perhaps changing the PDF export settings to not subset the fonts would help? That fixes some issues with ligatures, and might help here.

I've tried all of that I'm afraid. Based on your advice to another issue actually 🙂

 

[AWroe]

So based on @LibreTraining's comments I opened up the font in a font editor and I think I see the problem.

This is why the numbers are all over the place with the 'default' or 'old style' settings. The forced 'lining' is what's causing the issue when I try to copy the text out of the PDF, as previously mentioned with poor or incorrect unicodes. 

So correcting the numbers in the font so it works on default should solve the issue right?

 

 

[kenmcd]

4 hours ago, AWroe said:

So correcting the numbers in the font so it works on default should solve the issue right?

Yes.

[AWroe]

@LibreTraining Thanks for your input on this. In the end I decided to change the font to Arimo. It looks pretty much the same and the copy / past functions work right off the bat. I was concerned that changing the Corbel font on my PC might cause further compatibility issues down the line and the risk wasn't worth it.

For completeness though, I will try and replicate the font with a different name just to see if the fix works. My main priority for now though is getting the book sorted out.

Thanks again for everybody's help.