Odd Unicode characters instead of real letters are now used to render texts

Hello, in v2.0.550 text rendered in SVG rendering mode used normal letters:

<tspan x="0 16.308 33.264 61.74 80.46 88.416 114.48 133.2 151.956 167.256 185.976 214.452 232.236 250.74" y="0" font-family="g_d0_f2" font-size="36px" fill="rgb(46,83,149)">
  Sampledocument
</tspan>

The same node in v2.0.943 (after #9192) looks like so:

<tspan x="0 16.308 33.264 61.74 80.46 88.416 114.48 133.2 151.956 167.256 185.976 214.452 232.236 250.74" y="0" font-family="g_d1_f2" font-size="36px" fill="rgb(47,84,150)">
  
</tspan>

I don’t see how losing the ability to read the source would benefit anyone. Is there a way to get the old behavior back?

[Snuffleupagus]

[…] and using the same font as the original source in vast majority of cases gave me much more accurate results than using some default font.

A text-selection implementation that by design breaks a relatively common feature, such as ligatures, should probably not be described as a “good solution” in general; but I digress.

Perhaps it could be an option, like disablePrivateUnicodeArea on page.render?

If glyphs are left in their original positions, and are not being re-mapped to a PUA, that is guaranteed to completely break font rendering in a very large number of PDF files; refer to PR #9340 for additional details. Honestly, it really makes no sense whatsoever to add an option (and related code) that will knowingly break font rendering in this way.

Perhaps it may be slightly more acceptable to add an option, false by default of course (to not unnecessarily bloat toFontChar), that would leave glyphs in their original position in addition to re-mapping them to a PUA. Edit: D’oh, but obviously that won’t work, and you’d need an additional array (e.g. originalToFontChar, naming things is hard) to hold this data. However, before anyone attempts to implement something, it’s advisable to wait for Brendan to comment.

[timvandermeij]

Yes, let’s close this as such and track the issue there.