Hello everybody,

i'm a very beginner of Courselab.

I've tried to paste a text copied from a PDF file to Courselab's TextBox tool, but in the TextBox i can only see a serie of illegible small squares and not the sentence i have in the PDF source.

Where is the problem? [:confused:]
Do i have to buy any optional pack?

Thanks a lot!

Barney

Barney, One of the many options in the creation of a PDF is to not allow copy and paste. Looks like this isn't going to be helping you.
If it is a document that isn't 'yours' then ask the author if you can use it and they'll possibly give you copy of the original text. Then again they might not if it's commercial or an extract from an original work such as a book. If it's published as a public domain document there may still be rights assigned to it, again asking will often get you the original source material.
So it's probably a rights management issue.
Nick

Thanks Nick for your kind reply. I'm going to ask the author about rights, because not all PDF files i have (created by several different authors) cause this problem.

Barney

It might depend on how the PDF writer was set up too, often when it's on a per user basis the last used settings can propogate into later uses so if the disallow cut and paste is on it can stay on. It's not something you look at really so isn't noticed.
Fonts can sometimes be an issue, if a bizarre font is used then it will often be encoded into the pdf doc. You can also set the font family to use at pdf creation time so if one isn't available on the viewers PC the next best option will be used.
If you cut and paste text in an unknown font and the font info comes over with the text then your PC will just draw boxes or odd symbols instead. Similar to the odd formatting you see when you cut and paste from MS Word documents.

It's always best to get authors permissions to use materials.
Nick