[XeTeX] how to do (better) searchable PDFs in xelatex?

[mskala at ansuz.sooke.bc.ca]

On Sun, 14 Oct 2012, Peter Baker wrote:
> It's all in the font, really. If an OT substitution results in a character
> from the font's PUA being inserted in the character stream (except for a few
> standard ligatures), then the result will be broken searches. Because of

Adobe encourages font designers to give glyphs names that reflect the
Unicode code points (or sequences thereof) that the glyphs should
represent in searches.  If font designers did that, and if PDF readers
looked at the glyph names according to Adobe's directions, then searches
would work regardless of PUA use.  However, not all fonts and not all
readers do this.

Some PDF readers will use the code points in the cmap table or equivalent
in preference to the glyph names when cmap code points exist, so your
recommendation of unencoded glyphs remains a good idea even when glyph
names ought to resolve the issue.
-- 
Matthew Skala
mskala at ansuz.sooke.bc.ca                 People before principles.
http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/