This is not specifically a DevonThink issue but DevonThink is equally affected.
I have access to electronic publications published by a legal publisher. It is possible to download extracts of the books as PDFs.
However, using any PDF viewing app on the Mac (including DevonThink, such as Adobe Acrobat, Foxit, PDFpen Pro, etc.) copying text from the resulting PDF produces garbage. Also it is not possible to search for text (as the search only sees garbage).
For example:
if the text selected and copied is as follows:
“The objective test In deciding whether the parties have reached agreement, the courts normally apply the objective test,6 which is further discussed at para.2-003 below. Under this test, once the parties have to all outward appearances agreed in the same terms on the same subject-matter,7 then neither can, generally,8 rely on some unexpressed qualification or reservation to show that he had not in fact agreed to the terms to which he had appeared to agree. Such subjective reservations of one party therefore do not prevent the formation of a contract.9”
This is what is produced to the clipboard:
"“7KHREMHFWLYH WHVW ,QGHFLGLQJZKHWKHU WKHSDUWLHVKDYH UHDFKHGDJUHHPHQW
WKHFRXUWVQRUPDOO\DSSO\WKHREMHFWLYHWHVWZKLFKLVIXUWKHUGLVFXVVHGDWSDUD
EHORZ 8QGHU WKLV WHVW RQFH WKH SDUWLHV KDYH WR DOO RXWZDUG DSSHDUDQFHV
DJUHHG LQ WKH VDPH WHUPV RQ WKH VDPH VXEMHFWPDWWHU WKHQ QHLWKHU FDQ
JHQHUDOO\e UHO\RQVRPHXQH[SUHVVHGTXDOLೳ FDWLRQRU UHVHUYDWLRQ WRVKRZ WKDWKH
KDG QRW LQ IDFW DJUHHG WR WKH WHUPV WR ZKLFK KH KDG DSSHDUHG WR DJUHH 6XFK
VXEMHFWLYH UHVHUYDWLRQV RI RQH SDUW\ WKHUHIRUH GR QRW SUHYHQW WKH IRUPDWLRQ RI D
FRQWUDFW”
However, exporting the PDF to Word (using PDFPen Pro) does not produce readable text.
But opening the same PDF in a PDF viewing app for Microsoft Windows does allow me to copy the selected passage as text. (For this I used PDFX-Change running under CrossOver).
A page from the downloaded file is attached.
Test page.pdf (127.6 KB)
Any help from DevonThink or another user on identifying the problem would be greatly appreciated.