Is the latex source for specifying systems available? Or any other version of the published pdf file?

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Shiyao MA

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Jan 17, 2020, 10:56:02 AM1/17/20
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The pdf downloaded from leslie's homepage cannot:
- search text inside
- highlight with preview.app


je...@emptysquare.net

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Jul 4, 2021, 4:20:38 PM7/4/21
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I’m curious about this question too. There’s something quirky about the Specifying Systems PDF that makes it different from all other PDFs I’ve read. Preview.app can search others, but not Specifying Systems. Only Google Chrome to you knowledge can search it. I read papers on my iPad with a great app, PDF Expert. With other PDFs, highlighting a passage adds its text to a list of highlights. With Specifying Systems, the highlighted text appears as gibberish. (See image.) There’s some character encoding issue that makes this PDF different. Does anyone know what the problem is and how we could fix it?

DB8C26DE-F907-49DD-BA62-0EF238A547C3.jpeg

Leslie Lamport

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Jul 4, 2021, 8:42:17 PM7/4/21
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Thank you for pointing out this problem.  It appears that an incorrect version of the pdf file was on the Web site.  I have posted a new version; please let me know if it solves the problem.  And I would greatly appreciate it if you could check that there have been no changes to the text--except that the index has been reformatted.

Leslie Lamport

A. Jesse Jiryu Davis

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Jul 5, 2021, 8:24:15 AM7/5/21
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Frabjous day, search works in the new copy (book-21-07-04.pdf)! So does PDF Expert’s underline feature. An entirely scientific random sample of pages indicates that the new version appears identical to the old one, except for the index, which is a little different in the new version (more compact?).

Now if we could marry the improvements you made in book-21-07-04.pdf with the table of contents version that would be even better. The TOC version not only allows me to navigate to chapters from the Preview.app sidebar, but it also properly supports "go to page": If I tell Preview to jump to page 45, I jump to the real page 45. In book-21-07-04.pdf, there's still no TOC in the Preview sidebar, and when I tell Preview to jump to page 45, I land on the real page 27. However, the TOC version is not searchable, and yours is.

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A. Jesse Jiryu Davis

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Jul 5, 2021, 2:59:18 PM7/5/21
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I just asked Jack Fox how he originally made the TOC for Specifying Systems, it sounds labor-intensive. He uses the "Foxit PDF reader" as you'd expect Jack Fox to do.

1) Highlight the text you want in the bookmark caption, right-click and select bookmark from the context menu.

2) Hit enter to finalize the bookmark

3) To subordinate one bookmark to another you have to cut it from the bookmarks and then "Paste under selected bookmark" from the context menu.

A. Jesse Jiryu Davis

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Jul 5, 2021, 5:02:13 PM7/5/21
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I think I’ve come up with an easier method for adding a clickable table of contents that’s visible in Preview etc., I’ll send an update soon. 

je...@emptysquare.net

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Jul 6, 2021, 9:43:58 AM7/6/21
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Here's a Python script that can take the current version of the PDF and add bookmarks, as well as fixing page numbers: https://github.com/ajdavis/specifying-systems-bookmarks-gen. I made a script so that if Leslie or anyone makes additional corrections to the source, we can re-run the script and (if the changes are small). I've attached a PDF based on Leslie's July 4 version, please let me know how it works for you all.
book-21-07-04-with-bookmarks.pdf

Jack Fox

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Jul 6, 2021, 1:06:51 PM7/6/21
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While I can open the pdf you just posted in the FireFox browser, Foxit PDF Reader reports "Format error: Not a PDF or corrupted". Strange.

A. Jesse Jiryu Davis

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Jul 6, 2021, 1:53:38 PM7/6/21
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Oops, I had some null bytes in there that Preview ignored but Foxit didn't like. Fixed.

book-21-07-04-with-bookmarks-2.pdf

Jack Fox

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Jul 6, 2021, 2:00:23 PM7/6/21
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Sweet. Works like a charm.
And page numbers fixed too!
Now if only we could click and goto the page numbers in the index...
But at least with page numbers fixed there is a workaround.
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