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Text problems in PDFs from InDesign with All Caps

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2008-03-21 15:19:32
ipomaea
Registered: Mar 21 2008
Posts: 5

Hello -

I noticed, because of Google search results on our PDFs, that we are getting random capitalization in any text that has had "all caps" applied in the original InDesign file.

You can see for instance in this file:
www.strongtie.com/ftp/newsletter/SR-08-01.pdf

If you view the tagged text with the Reading Order Touchup Tool you see what Google sees: things like "wall BraciNg code chaNges froNt aNd ceNter last cycle".

I did tests with different fonts, different PDF compatibility levels, tagged PDF turned on and off. The only thing that matters is whether All Caps has been checked in the InDesign file.

Anyone have any solutions? We recently started using Google Custom Search on our site, and we rely heavily on PDFs. Our Google results for our PDFs look terrible and are a real problem!

Thanks
Tricia

My Product Information:
Acrobat Pro 8.1.2, Windows
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2008-03-25 14:17:45
#1
DuffJohnson
Expert
Registered: May 30 2006
Posts: 96
The file you linked to on your website isn't actually tagged. However, I can see the problem anyway when looking at the Contents panel. In this case, your problem heading is broken up into containers with variable cases.

You are going to have to solve the problem in InDesign, and I'm not precisely sure what the solution will be. You can test the results very quickly by looking at the Content tree in Acrobat to examine the effects of your changes - this will reliably predict the effect on Google's engine.

My suspicion is that you will need to scrap and recreate the problem text in InDesign, possibly without resorting to ALL CAPS - you may, for example, need to simply type in CAPS rather than use that specific function in ID.

As you might be gathering, there is FAR from perfect communication between ID and PDF at this time.

Duff Johnson
w - http://www.duff-johnson.com
t - http://www.twitter.com/duffjohnson

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2008-03-27 08:27:54
#2
ipomaea
Registered: Mar 21 2008
Posts: 5
Thank you so much for your reply.

I decided to try making a document from scratch - and I'm seeing exactly the same problem, with any capitalized text (styled or typed).

The very simple file is here:
www.strongtie.com/scripts/scratch3.pdf

Since I haven't seen any other mention of this online, and since this is happening to all the files created at my company with InDesign (CS2 and CS3), I am at a complete loss.

The one PDF file we have made that doesn't have this problem was created by printing a postscript file from ID using pdf 7.0, then using Distiller 4.0 (yes four point oh).

We can use that method, I suppose, but it seems odd that the latest ID can't handle this? If we use the postscript-distiller method we lose bookmarks etc as well.

If you have any ideas at all I'd love to hear them!
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2008-03-28 07:37:40
#3
DuffJohnson
Expert
Registered: May 30 2006
Posts: 96
Well, it's quite telling that the one file that worked correctly for you was produced by distilling PostScript.

Have you tried the same approach, but distilling using the latest version of Distiller? If THAT doesn't work, you should file a Bug Report with Adobe for Distiller.

Otherwise, the answer is simple enough (if unfortunate) - you've uncovered a nasty bug in the InDesign -> PDF converter, which is itself worthy of a bug report, this one to the InDesign folks.

Duff Johnson
w - http://www.duff-johnson.com
t - http://www.twitter.com/duffjohnson

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2008-03-28 08:21:16
#4
ipomaea
Registered: Mar 21 2008
Posts: 5
Thanks again, even though it's not exactly good news :)

I will file some bug reports. At least we have *some* option now...
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