[scribus] Searchable old style numbers in PDFs

[Gregory Pittman]

On 07/20/2011 08:39 AM, Ipacs Péter wrote:
> Hi guys,
>
> I'm new to this mail list and also I'm not a Scribus expert either so please
> forgive me if I ask dumb questions.
>
> I got a beautiful OTF font, that has small numbers (old style
> numbers) embedded. The only way (I know about) to insert small numbers into
> a document is to use the insert glyph feature so that's what I do, I browse
> for the needed glyph and I insert it.
> When it comes to printing the document Scribus insert the font outline into
> the PDF and renders it flawlessly. However, the small numbers are
> not searchable as normal numbers. Please take a look on the attached PDF.
> I was wondering how could I resolve this problem and the only way that come
> to mind is to somehow replace the generated "embedded text" or individual
> characters into the PDF with searchable characters. Not sure
> my explanation makes sense to you, I just hope so:)
> I did search for a solution but had no luck at all.
>
> What do you think, is there any way to reach the desired effect? Having
> small number glyphs but replacing the "underlying text" with real arabic
> numbers.
>
The bigger problem we have is that in general you can't enter a Unicode 
value in the Search dialog. I thought that there was a feature request 
for this some time back, IIRC. For all I know, this may also extend to 
Adobe Reader as far as not recognizing/finding these characters.

Trying this again just now, I find that if you can highlight and copy 
your characters, you can at least sometimes paste them into the search 
spinbox. This may or may not be of any use to you.

Greg