PDF (from EPUB) has text layer different to what's displayed

[Sam Wilson]

When converting an EPUB to PDF, the text that is displayed in the PDF differs from what can be selected and copied.

The EPUB contains `<h2>हिन्द स्वराज — हिन्द स्वराज</h2>` and when converted to PDF this is displayed correctly — but when selected and copied, it ends up as `ह द वराज — ह द वराज`.

Using ebook-convert (calibre 5.10.1) on Ubuntu.

Downstream bug (in Wikisource Export) is https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T274560

[Kovid Goyal (kovid)]

Sadly PDF generation is not in calibre's control. It is done by Qt
WebEngine (aka Chromium). Chromium recently switched to using harfbuzz
for font shaping instead of sfntly, that might be the cause for it You
can test it by using a version of calibre from before the change,
possibly 5.6 or 5.7.

 status invalid

[Sam Wilson (samwilson.id.au)]

Thanks for the quick reply.

That's unfortunate. I guess we can just wait till it (maybe) gets fixed upstream. There are other improvements from recent Calibre that we want to keep.

[Sam Wilson (samwilson.id.au)]

I've lodged an issue with Qt WebEngine: https://bugreports.qt.io/browse/QTBUG-91126