411887 - Displays strange characters after you copy and paste form a PDF

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[Ramon]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-GB; rv:1.8.1.11) Gecko/20071127 Firefox/2.0.0.11
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-GB; rv:1.8.1.11) Gecko/20071127 Firefox/2.0.0.11

Performed a normal copy from a PDF document and paste the text in the address (URL) bar.  "Corrupted" appeared in the address bar and made cursor (of text) movement extremely tedious.

PDF Address:  http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/jdev/collateral/papers/10g/gswUseCaseModeling.pdf

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.  By using Adobe Reader 8, open the PDF found on http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/jdev/collateral/papers/10g/gswUseCaseModeling.pdf
2.  Highlight text, and right click on copy.
3.  Open a new tab and right click on the address bar and select paste.
Actual Results:  
*  Strange character will appear.  Sometimes a series of white characters will appear.
*  When you try to move the blinking cursor in the address bar, it will not respone immediately.

Expected Results:  
It either displays human-readable characters or /nothing/.  Maybe the PDF is somehow protected?

Comment 1

[Justin Kerk]

This happens if you just open the file in Acrobat and then paste into Notepad, so it has nothing to do with Firefox.

Comment 2

[Ramon]

Yes, it also happens when you are using Notepad... but the difference is that on Notepad you are able to move the blinking cursor normally, unlike Firefox's address bar and hence I assume that it is a trivial bug!

Comment 3

[Marcin Cieślak (:saper)]

This PDF contains fonts encoded with so-called CID encoding. The information how to convert CID codepoints into unicode codepoints is missing - therefore you have only "character 1", "character 2", etc. there and you don't know how they map to the Unicode. Basically reversing this process is more or less equivalent to the OCR'ing the font.

some background on this: 

http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/cairo/2007-February/009452.html

On Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD amd64; en-US; rv:1.8.1.12) Gecko/20080403 SeaMonkey/1.1.8 Mnenhy/0.7.5.0 I can paste such garbage into the address bar and it is handle normally, i.e. I can edit it, scroll etc.

Comment 4

[Tyler Downer [He/Him]]

This bug was reported on Firefox 2.x or older, which is no longer supported and will not be receiving any more updates. I strongly suggest that you update to Firefox 3.6.3 or later, update your plugins (flash, adobe, etc.), and retest in a new profile. If you still see the issue with the updated Firefox, please post here. Otherwise, please close as RESOLVED > WORKSFORME
http://www.mozilla.com
http://support.mozilla.com/kb/Managing+profiles
http://support.mozilla.com/kb/Safe+mode

Comment 5

[Tyler Downer [He/Him]]

No reply, INCOMPLETE. Please retest with Firefox 3.6.x or later and a new profile (http://support.mozilla.com/kb/Managing+profiles). If you continue to see this issue with the newest firefox and a new profile, then please comment on this bug.