Can't copy Japanese text from PDFs?

[RNobleman]

I've selected some Japanese text in the PDF and clicked Edit - Copy. But when I paste it anywhere else (Google, Word, a browser, my flashcard program, etc.) all that shows are squares or question marks.

Is there any way to copy Japanese text from the PDFs or do I really need to re-enter it all manually?!

Thanks.

[jemstone]

your machine probably have not been configured to display japanese characters. the following link is a good help to accomplish that.
http://www.japanesepod101.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=9

[RNobleman]

I am able to read and writing Japanese characters fine, so I don't think that is the problem. Are you or anyone else able to copy and paste Japanese characters from the PDFs?

Thanks,

Rick

[Shaydwyrm]

Now that you mention it, I can't seem to do it either.

[jemstone]

mm... then perhaps it might not be unicode? lemme do a little test.. i'll let you know of the results

edit:
i can't replicate it. if you tried to paste it in notepad, and then save it with Unicode encoding, does it work?

[RNobleman]

Sorry for not replying recently. I was without a computer for a while. Now I have a Mac.

I still can't get it to work. As far as I can tell, there's no way to save a document as Unicode in the Mac text editor, TextEdit. I did try saving it as RTF and Word formats, but that didn't work.

Any other suggestions?

Thanks.

[jemstone]

i'm looking at this site,
http://www.alanwood.net/unicode/utiliti ... acosx.html

it says TextEdit can save unicode, UTF-8 and UTF-16. i can check out TextEdit for you coz i got a mac running at home.

[jemstone]

i just tested it with a japanese pdf file. i could copy and paste it on TextEdit. it shows up as japanese characters.

when i "Save As", the plain text encoding is automatically set as Unicode UTF-16.

edit:
i'm assuming you use "Preview" to view the pdf right? i copied the japanese text with Preview.

[RNobleman]

Thanks for your reply.

I was able to select Japanese text using the Select tool. But this copies the text as a graphic image, not as editable text characters, which is what I need. I'm copying it into my flashcard program.

The Text tool is not able to select any Japanese text as far as I can tell.

Were you using the Select tool when you copied the text into TextEdit and saved it?

[jemstone]

actualli... i didn't use the select tool.. i used the text tool.

i don't have a jp101 pdf with me, but i'll take a few screenshots to show you with some other pdf that has japanese words in it.

edit:
for some reason my shell account is acting weird tonight... the upload goes halfway and it stalls... all the time! no idea why.. i'll see if i can successfully upload it at the office tomorrow.

edit 2:
i've uploaded it.
http://jemstone.freeshell.org/temp/japanese_pdf.tiff

[Andresit0]

For Mac OS X users this does the trick


Remove PDF password restrictions using ColorSync
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php? ... &lsrc=osxh

"
Open the restricted PDF in ColorSync.
Choose File: Save as, and name it whatever you like.
Open the saved file in Adobe Reader or Preview and enjoy!
"

now you can copy the japanese text and get rid of... romaji for instance!

good luck

[Andresit0]

Trick is in above post

[brendanmac1975]

Any ideas how to do this in Windows?

[josiah]

as far as i know u need adobe professional, unless there's a work around available

[parasitius]

I'm trying to copy and paste from lesson PDFs in windows 2003. I have *never* had any other problems with localization support except right now with the japanesepod101 pdf's. I searched google for PDF's with Japanese text in them (random ones from random companies) and it copies fine.

Please help! I signed up mainly to save myself from having to type useful sentences from the audio by hand, but if I can't copy from the PDF it's pointless, I'll still have to type by hand to get sentences into my learning software