Print to PDF Using FoxIt in Writer - Text not Selectable

English
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#1

I’m printing a Writer document using Foxit Reader PDF Printer. The resulting document is an image so that the text is not selectable in a PDF viewer. I’ve tried opening the file in both Foxit Reader and Sumatra. I’ve also tried using the PDF Printer from Microsoft. In all cases text in the file can not selected. Attempting to select anything shows an image selection and a large rectangle is selected.

Printing from Calc does not have this problem.

Printing a fresh Write document does not have this problem.

What setting could have been enabled on my existing document that would be causing this?

Copying Entire Document Including all Formatting
Writer option to Print to a "PDF Printer" results in poor quality
#2

Unless to have a good reason to print to pdf, you are better off to export to pdf. You will get a smaller file size, active links and bookmarks, and more control over the result.

#4

Yes, thank you. That worked. I tend to use Foxit PDF Writer because I’m used to it and I use the common settings in every app. So I will use Export to PDF when printing this file.

But that still doesn’t explain what is messed up about this document. I can’t find anything in the printing set up that would cause this problem.

#6

I suspect very much that we just prepare and submit raster image to printers.

#7

??? Perhaps you don’t understand that a PDF file doesn’t require an image. PDF allows commands that display text with formatting. This text can be selected and copied.

Some of the sources that provide PDF documents to me send image based documents. Typically, I think it is because they don’t know how to do otherwise. But sometimes the document is not an image, rather they have disabled text selection and copying because of some paranoia. They don’t realize that anyone in possession of the document can run it through OCR software and recover the text. This is more work than I’m willing to do to use a data sheet, so I typically just don’t use their parts.

#8

??? Perhaps you don’t understand what you reply to? I describe you my suspicion about how we prepare the data for print, and you answer about what PDF is. It is completely orthogonal, and you might notice that when we export PDF, we do export vector+text as appropriate; but you could also imagine that printing could be different (especially given that we print on different OSes).

Anyway, why do I try to answer to such a person in the first place?

#11

I said other document files print to PDF and contain the text. I said it does not matter which PDF writer tool I use. I said it does not matter what PDF viewer I use. The problem is only seen with this one Libreoffice Writer file. I have no idea why you are complicating this by talking about converting the file to an image for printing. For any other document, the file is printed with text. Clearly in this case, the file is printed as an image. ONLY in this ONE CASE. That’s the problem.

So what are you trying to say about printing raster images?

#12

This is relevant, but without the specific problematic document, it’s only possible to guess (which is what I did).

This is irrelevant for the discussion of my comment.

This is irrelevant for the discussion of my comment.

The conversion of the document to image happens in LibreOffice, not in Foxit, which was what I implied, which was different compared to what @EarnestAl suspected, and which was the reason I commented. It was not “complication”, but if you prefer to react like you do, please go on. I don’t care to try to help you find the reason anymore.

#13

I’m trying to understand what you are saying, but the reality is these documents are not printed to PDF as an image in the general case. They contain text with formatting which can be selected and copied from the PDF document. Is that not correct?

The image is formed by the PDF reader you choose, no?

Here, maybe this will help. The file that presents in the reader as an image is 1.4 MB. The file that presents as text is only 59 kB. So it would seem the text selectable PDF file is not an image at all. It contains text with font descriptions and location information.

I have seen PDF files where the software that generated it was not at all sophisticated and placed each and every letter as a separate entity. When the text is selected in the PDF viewer, the selection is not exactly contiguous, either selecting other text as if it were part of the string seen, or adding spaces between each letter, or both. This would seem to be further evidence that the PDF file is not an image file like a JPG or PNG, but a text file with formatting.

#14

In general case, yes, you are correct: the functions used for printing may send text to the device using functions that take text. That way, the printer (in this case, a virtual printer) can then put the text to the resulting media (a PDF in this case) as text.

But in the specific case, it is obvious that the print procedure for some reason preprocesses the data into a raster image before sending to device. As said, it’s difficult to say what is the reason (which is your question, and which is what can only be answered having a sample of problematic document), but that’s different from idea that the problem is on Foxit side.

Yes and no.
PDF is a complex format, and it may contain many kinds of data: text, lines, raster images, fonts… And when displaying, your PDF reader indeed outputs that data, that way forming the final image. But it does different things to output the data: e.g., when it deals with embedded raster, it simply copies pixels from internal raster to the monitor (I’m simplifying). To show text, it would do more complex things, and that would depend on if that text refers to embedded fonts or no (but this is unrelated to this problem).
In your case, LibreOffice forms a raster image, sends it to the printer, and it has no text data, only a picture, which gets embedded to the resulting PDF. Then your reader will simply show that raster.

#15

Ok, so I think I got an acknowledgement that the printing software is not the cause of the problem and so there is no reason to discuss it further.

The problem is some setting that is associated with the LibreOffice Writer document, not Writer itself, not the printing software, but the LibreOffice Writer document, is controlling the printing to make it an image and not text.

Do you have any idea what this setting might be? I can’t find it.

#16

I already wrote:

#17

So you don’t know what settings in LibreOffice could impact this? Here is a test file if you wish to play with it.

What are you going to look at?

Credit_Statement_Feb_2022_.doc (27.5 KB)

#18

First of all, I opened that file in LibreOffice, and printed it to a virtual PDF printer (Microsoft Print to PDF). And it printed as text, not as image.

Here is the PDF (renamed to DOC to allow attaching here).
problem.pdf.doc (197.8 KB)

Version: 7.3.1.3 (x64) / LibreOffice Community
Build ID: a69ca51ded25f3eefd52d7bf9a5fad8c90b87951
CPU threads: 12; OS: Windows 10.0 Build 19044; UI render: default; VCL: win
Locale: en-US (ru_RU); UI: en-US
Calc: CL

So the next would be to install Foxit PDF printer to test.

#19

And here is the result of printing to Foxit PDF Editor Printer Version 11.2.1.4537.

Credit_Statement_Feb_2022_.pdf.doc (57.2 KB)

I can’t repro the problem - so either the attached file is not problematic, or something else is affecting the result…

#20

Importantly, it is Not a Writer document, it is Word Document 8 so it looks like a conversion issue.

I could not reproduce @mikekaganski pdf even after installing 7.3.1.3 (and turning off Skia). However, I see there is a white page background and I think this is what is blocking the text underneath from being able to be selected as well as increasing file size.

Click Format > Page style > Area and click the button None (even though it appears to be selected already). Print to PDF without problem to get text

WhiteBackgroundCoversText
WhiteBackgroundCoversText845×675 14 KB

Or instead in the Print dialogue, in the Writer tab, untick Page background to prevent it from being printed which I suspect Mike has unticked as default.

#21

Interesting!
I have tried under safe mode, and I repro the raster image in it. I will try to compare my profile settings with the default ones, to see what could be the affecting difference.

#22

Could you also provide YOUR pdf created wuth foxit, so we can check it with the findings of @EarnestAl

Maybe the text is acually there in your pdf, but not selectable in your viewer, because of another invisible object at the same place.

#23

I’m asking about settings in the tool, Libreoffice. If you don’t know, that’s an ok answer.

#24

The file I provided does show the problem. The file you linked to above is the .doc file, not the .pdf file. Is that what you intended?

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