(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

Hi, Ive encountered this problem a couple of times, and now I've got around to querying it.

My ePDF reader 0.1.7 will not select and copy text.

When you select text it only remains highlighted while you have the mouse button depressed.

As soon as you let go to copy, it deselects the text.

Pressing Ctrl+C whilst the mouse button is depressed doesn’t work either.

I'm running Lucid 5.2.5 live from CD with 500MB RAM.

Am I doing something wrong? Is there a revised version?

Thanks.

Does it behave like that with all PDFs, or just a handful of them?

I think I remember hearing that there was a way, when authoring PDFs, to prevent text from being selected and copied.

I found that problem, & so installed Foxitreader, which does copy text, as well as opening a web browser when weblinks in pdfs are clicked.

hi ozsouth

it epdfview, choose the select text option, then highlight the text you want to copy. the highlighted text is automatically copied to the clipboard.

icosahedron wrote:Am I doing something wrong?

No and Yes. You are selecting it properly. (The fact that you are able to highlight the text indicates that you have already found Edit -> Select Text.) But you need to use a different method of pasting it.

Apparently, PDF Viewer 0.1.7 places the text in the primary selection buffer, but doesn't copy it to the usual clipboard. Ctrl+V won't find the text. To paste the text from the selection buffer, point to your desired destination and press the middle mouse button (or, if you have an insufficient number of buttons, press both left and right buttons simultaneously).

To get PDF Viewer 0.1.7 to open a browser when you click on a URI, you may need to tell it which browser you have. Go to Edit -> Preferences -> External Commands and change the entry for Web Browser: to use the proper name. In most recent Puppies the name "defaultbrowser" should work. If not, use the actual name of your browser.

A friendly soul taught me a work around that maybe don't suite you
but as a last resort?

http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 064#651064

Make a copy of the pdf with another name for to not lose it by accident
then on that copy do this in Terminal/Console/Urxvt CLI? You may need to rename that one later to nameofwantedtextversion.txt
and that works very fast and you can quote but you lose the formatting
and need to edit such a lot.

Then something to look into is this program and to install it in your linux?
Adobe/Reader9 can select text but it is a 50MB big program so
use it if you need to do this often and find the pdftotext command too primitive

nooby wrote:A friendly soul taught me a work around that maybe...

At that time I did not know it better.
But we all learning.
See Can I convert a .pdf to simple text in Puppy? [solved] again

http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... h&id=59240

By accident and your help I realized it can be done in the pdf viewer
that Puppy already have. Here is my maybe confusing text about how to do it manually?

It works the other way around. First go to the text
Then highlight what you want to copy.

1. You place the cursor at the beginning of text of choice and
2. then press right index finger on your Mouse most left button
3. drag the cursor over the text that you want to copy
4. As soon as you are at the end of the wanted quote and
5. release the index then
6. the high ligtning disappear
7. Never mind go to the upper right corner and
the icon that is for tools? There it says Select Text
and that place that text in the memory an
8 then you go to the box here at Murga or the document
you want to paste in the quote and
9. you do click on middle wheel or button?
and that paste the text. Like I do here below.

The Brain Science Podcast is part of sciencepodcasters.org, the website

icosahedron Try it out and tell me if it works for you too?

I always use evince instead, quicker solution. I use this .pet that once installed evince is set as default reader automatically, I don't remember where I got it from:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/cqilzg41cl53x ... 3-i386.pet

Eince is a document viewer for multiple document formats.
The goal of evince is to replace the multiple document viewers t
hat exist on the GNOME Desktop ...

Had not heard about it. But as told us above? .pdf do allow for
that some PDF texts are cryptic so it is impossible to do it?
One maybe can take a screen of the text and show as .jpg

But Evince can not copy a cryptic pdf can it? I know too little

My need has been satisfied now when I know how to make copies
where it is allowed.

Thanks for all suggestions. Here's what I found:

vicmz - evince looks good, but copies whole doc when a line selected & I can't set A4 paper size.
666philb - epdfview select, copy & paste, as is, doesn't work for me.
npierce - even with defaultbrowser set, many weblinks don't work.
nooby - method most promising, but copies 5+ lines when 1 selected. As others above concur, this is the best method for standard installs.

Folks, Foxitreader mostly does the things I require, BUT as it is an old version (the win version is much later) very
occasionally, a pdf won't open, so I keep epdfview 'just in case'.

Thanks everyone, very helpful responses and some alternatives there if I need them.

npierce's answer solves my problem quickest. Thanks too for the clear and succinct explanation. I have no middle button, but the simultaneous click works.

Nooby, your solution works for me, but I do step 7 first. I have no middle button so I click left and right at the same time. Thanks.

Now if I can just remember how to put 'solved' in the thread title...

Now if I can just remember how to put 'solved' in the thread title...


Not sure but you go to your first post. the OP
as some name it? The original post.

then in the upper right corner it says Edit.
click o nthat one and then advanced edit
if you don't see the title opening.
and you edit the title. As I see you have but
you did not do the [Solved] but who cares?

icosahedron, you're welcome. I'm glad the simultaneous click works for you. When I use a two-button mouse, it sometimes it takes a little practice for me to get the my fingers synchronized.

ozsouth, yes, I see what you mean about the weblinks. Both epdfview and foxit find the links that were intentionally embedded as Link Annotation Objects, but foxit has the added ability to sniff out URIs that are just mentioned in normal text (without any special encoding).

Glad to notice this thread as i had been wondering. npierce's directions worked for me too. Interesting that using the middle button to paste also works when using rxvt - as in copying code generated/ highlighted and then pasting into these pages or a text editor. Also found that ePDF preferences/ external commands/ Web Browser says 'firefox %s'. I'm using their Nightly 12.0 in Slacko 533.